Analysis of temporal and throughput fair scheduling in multirate WLANs

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) physical layer (PHY) offers multiple data rates. In multi-rate WLANs, 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) presents the phenomenon so called ldquoperformance anomalyrdquo: when some hosts transmit at lower data rates, throughput of others at high rates will be restricted within the lowest rate, leading to the degradation of overall performance. Therefore, the link adaptation scheme for 802.11 WLAN should consider not only throughput of the observed host but also system throughput in order to optimize the overall performance. In this paper we propose a cross-layer link adaptation algorithm which improves system throughput by regarding the situation of PHY rate degradation more thoughtfully and critically, and meanwhile compensates the throughput of hosts with bad link qualities by applying differentiated channel access parameters. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the propose algorithm.

IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Physical Layer (PHY) offers multiple data rates. In multi-rate WLANs, 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, Distributed Coordination Function (DCF), essentially provides equal transmission opportunities to each sender host, causing the degradation of system throughput due to some hosts using low rates. In this paper we propose a cross-layer link adaptation scheme which improves throughput by adjusting MAC parameters according to PHY data rates to achieve time-based fairness instead of throughput-based fairness. Most importantly, in comparison with other approaches using a deterministic manner for temporal fairness (e.g. OAR), our random-access-based approach in statistic can be more effective to restrict the maximum packet delay within a bound when the number of stations grows. We conduct the transmission scenario of VoIP applications to evaluate the performance of our proposed scheme and the results demonstrate its effectiveness.

Fair scheduling or Fair Queueing (FQ) algorithms have received much attention in recent years because of their ability to provide a wide range of Quality-ofService (QoS) guarantees to end users. In this paper, we present a new analysis method that can statistically model such fair scheduling algorithms under Poisson arrivals and a general packet length distribution. We coin the new term M/G/FQ to describe this analysis method, which fits a broad range of scheduling policies including WFQ, SCFQ, SFQ and SPFQ.

In this paper, we propose a new medium access control (MAC) protocol, called cooperative access with relay's data (CARD) for multi-rate wireless local area networks (WLANs). CARD allows remote nodes to transmit their information at a higher data rate to access point (AP) by using intermediate nodes as relays. Particularly, under CARD, a relay node sends its own data packet after forwarding a packet from the original source node, thus to improve system throughput. Analytical and simulation results show that the CARD protocol can effectively improve system throughput and reduce service delay.

With the explosively increasing demand of multimedia applications in wireless local area networks (WLAN), Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning has become an important issue. IEEE 802.11 WLAN is the most popular WLAN technology today. In this paper, we propose an adaptive p-persistent based IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) scheme in WLAN. The proposed scheme can maximize the total channel throughput and also can provide the service differentiation to multiple traffic classes. This is achieved by updating the transmission probability for each station in a timely manner based on the network measurements. The simulation results show the scheme can quickly adapt the station transmission probabilities to the desirable values to achieve maximum throughput and QoS provisioning in a dynamic WLAN environment. The simulation results also match well with the theoretical analysis.

In recent years, the wireless local area networks (WLAN) access points (APs) are being deployed rapidly in the offices and the campuses to satisfy the quality of service (QoS) requirements such as network bandwidth. However, many empirical studies show that a large fraction of idle WLAN resources result in the significant energy losses. To reduce the energy consumption without violating the QoS requirement, we propose a QoS-aware AP energy saving mechanism using software defined network (SDN). We leverage the capability of the SDN controller to dynamically monitor the network condition information to estimate the network bandwidth requirement of the devices and then manage the network forwarding to provide seamless handover. Our experimental results show that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the number of power-on WLAN APs while still providing QoS guarantee, such as network bandwidth and handover cost.

The performance anomaly experienced by nodes in multi-rate wireless local area networks (WLANs) leads to low throughput and unfairness. To this end, we propose a distributed, token-based approach that allows applications to control nodes channel occupancy time via a single tuning knob. Our approach makes use of local information extensively and does not require any modifications to the IEEE 802.11 MAC nor require explicit signaling. Simulation results show our approach to be effective in ensuring fairness, and isolating high and low rate flows.

Providing quality of service (QoS) for converging traffic in wireless local area network (WLAN) is still a major issue for the researchers and industries. Due to the limited bandwidth and exposure to unpredictable interferences in a wireless environment, efficient management and optimization of the access protocols are essential to provide acceptable QoS for real-time traffic and fairness to best-effort traffic. In this paper, we investigate the throughput and delay performance of the legacy IEEE 802.11 and the 802.11e when carrying converging data in WLAN. We evaluate our recently proposed protocol known as wireless token network protocol (WTN) and show that WTN successfully increases performance of converging traffic in WLAN by, first, decreasing the size of the frames and subframes of the MAC header, and second, by implementing centralized polling to reduce collisions of packets.

With the rapid development of wireless local area network (WLAN) and the proliferation of intelligent terminals, the current WLAN protocol is no longer able to meet the needs of users. Therefore, the next generation WLAN: IEEE 802.11ax has emerged to meet the growing demand for user traffic. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), which enables simultaneous transmission of data by different User Equipment (UEs), is considered to be one of the key technologies of IEEE 802.11ax. In order to achieve high throughput rates and low access latency to ensure quality of service (QoS), IEEE 802.11ax supports two uplink access modes: scheduling access and random access. However, how to adaptively and efficiently switch these two access mechanisms in the process of real-time operation of the system, and effectively reduce the drawbacks caused by these two mechanisms is a thorny problem. This paper proposes an evaluation mechanism of network traffic load based on OFDMA-MAC protocol, and its performance is verified by simulation. The simulation results show that the traffic load assessment mechanism effectively improves the network throughput and quality of service (QoS), and also adapts to the dynamic changes in network traffic.

Fair scheduling algorithms have been proposed to tackle the problem of bursty and location-dependent errors in wireless packet networks. Most of those algorithms ensure the fairness property and guarantee the QoS of all sessions in a large-scale cellular network such as GSM or GPRS. In this paper, we propose the Weighted-Sacrificing Fair Queueing (WSFQ) scheduling algorithm for small-area and device-limited wireless networks. WSFQ slows down the growth of queue length in limited-buffer devices, still maintains the properties of fairness, and guarantees the throughputs of the system. Moreover, WSFQ can easily adapt itself to various kinds of traffic load. We also implement a packet-based scheduling algorithm, the Packetized Weighted Sacrificing Fair Queueing (PWSFQ), to approach the WSFQ. WSFQ and PWSFQ are evaluated by comparing with other algorithms by mathematical analysis and simulations.

Fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks comprising wireless local area networks (WLANs) and passive optical networks (PONs) have attracted much attention recently for future cyber-physical systems (CPSs). Because of the explosive growth of smart devices such as smart phones and sensors, the number of such devices has also grown phenomenally that require real time communication demanding quality of service (QoS)-centric applications for CPSs, such as smart grid, medical, and traffic control systems, which construct smart society. To deal with such situations, the FiWi access networks may be a suitable choice since they are capable of providing both wide bandwidth and flexibility. However, combining the WLAN and PON in FiWi that are inherently different networking technologies leads to inefficient data transmission in the point of junction of the WLAN and PON. Therefore, the QoS of real time communication degrades significantly. In this paper, we address this problem involving QoS degradation in the FiWi networks, and propose a QoS control scheme, which is based on cooperation between the WLAN and PON. Through computer-based simulations, we demonstrate that our proposed scheme can significantly improve the QoS performance of the FiWi access networks for CPSs.

This paper presents an add-on Class of Service (CoS) layer for wireless mesh networks. The proposed protocol is applicable for contention-based MACs and is therefore compatible with most of the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) protocols. The protocol has a locally centralized control for managing data flows, which either reserve a fixed bandwidth or are weighted by fair scheduling. The protocol reduces transmission collisions, thus improving the overall throughput. IEEE 802.11 adhoc WLAN has been taken as a platform for simulations and prototyping for evaluating the protocol performance. Network Simulator Version 2 (NS2) simulations show that the CoS protocol efficiently differentiates bandwidth, supports bandwidth reservations, and reaches less than 10 ms transfer delay on IEEE 802.11b WLAN. Testing with a full prototype implementation verified the performance of the protocol.

Chaotic deployment of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) in dense urban areas is one of the common issues of many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Wi-Fi users. It results in a substantial reduction of the throughput and impedes the balanced distribution of bandwidth among the users. Most of these networks are managed independently and there is no cooperation among them. Moreover, the conventional association mechanism that selects the Access Points (APs) with the strongest Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) aggravates this situation. In this paper, we present a versatile near-optimal solution for the fair bandwidth distribution over virtualized WLANs through dynamic association control. The proposed scheme is called ACO-PF, which is developed on top of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) as a meta-heuristic technique to provide Proportional Fairness (PF) among the greedy clients. In fact, it presents a generic and centralized solution for ISPs that are using a common, virtualized or overlapped WLAN infrastructure for serving their customers. We have evaluated the efficacy of ACO-PF through numerical analysis versus popular existing schemes for both downlink and uplink scenarios. Our proposed technique has less complexity in terms of the implementation and running time for largescale WLANs and it can be easily developed and customized for different objective functions. In addition, it is implemented in a testbed environment to investigate the key challenges of real deployment scenarios.

The increasing demand for the coverage of high‐speed wireless local area networks (WLANs) is driving the installation of a very large number of access points (APs). Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising technology in the next generation networks to provide economical and scalable broadband access to wireless interconnection of multiple APs that manage individual WLANs in order to extend the coverage of the conventional single WLANs. In this paper, we develop a new analytical model to investigate the quality‐of‐service (QoS) performance metrics in WMNs interconnecting multiple WLANs. The model takes the phenomenon of communication locality into consideration. Extensive simulation experiments are conducted to validate the accuracy of the analytical model. The proposed model is then used to obtain the maximum achievable throughput, which is a key performance metrics in wireless networks. Moreover, we utilize the model to evaluate the impact of communication locality on network performance and investigate its effects on the optimization of integrated WLANs and multi‐hop mesh networks. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The next generation wireless local area network (WLAN) 802.11ax standards committee takes high quality of service(QoS) guarantee as one of important technology goals of the next generation WLAN. As a result of a variety of wireless traffics, so the requirements of the QoS must also be varied. However, the existing media access control(MAC) protocol based on orthogonal frequency division multiple access(OFDMA) can’t support QoS diversification and high requirement well. To solve this problem, this paper presents a QoS-oriented OFDMA MAC for the next generation WLAN. On one hand, for backward compatibility consideration, continue to use four priority traffics of 802.11e in this protocol; on the other hand, the introduction of QoS-oriented priority scheduling algorithm to support future wireless traffic feature which is QoS of diversification and high requirements. Finally, through the simulation, the system effective throughput of the proposed QoS-OFDMA MAC is 57.8% and 59% higher than the OFDMA MAC of the sequential scheduling algorithm and the OFDMA MAC of the proportional fairness algorithm.