iVoIP: an intelligent bandwidth management scheme for VoIP in WLANs

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has been widely used by many mobile consumer devices in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLAN) due to its low cost and convenience. However, delays of all VoIP flows dramatically increase when network capacity is approached. Additionally, unfair traffic distribution between downlink and uplink flows in WLANs impacts the perceived VoIP quality. This paper proposes an intelligent bandwidth management scheme for VoIP services (iVoIP) that improves bandwidth utilization and provides fair downlink–uplink channel access. iVoIP is a cross-layer solution which includes two components: (1) iVoIP-Admission Control, which protects the quality of existing flows and increases the utilization of wireless network resources; (2) iVoIP-Fairness scheme, which balances the channel access opportunity between access point (AP) and wireless stations. iVoIP-Admission Control limits the number of VoIP flows based on an estimation of VoIP capacity. iVoIP-Fairness implements a contention window adaptation scheme at AP which uses stereotypes and considers several major quality of service parameters to balance the network access of downlink and uplink flows, respectively. Extensive simulations and real tests have been performed, demonstrating that iVoIP has both very good VoIP capacity estimation and admission control results. Additionally, iVoIP improves the downlink/uplink fairness level in terms of throughput, delay, loss, and VoIP quality.     

TCP-aware bidirectional bandwidth allocation in IEEE 802.16 networks

In this paper, we propose a bidirectional bandwidth-allocation mechanism to improve TCP performance in the IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access networks. By coupling the bandwidth allocation for uplink and downlink connections, the proposed mechanism increases the throughput of the downlink TCP flow and it enhances the efficiency of uplink bandwidth allocation for the TCP acknowledgment (ACK). According to the IEEE 802.16 standard, when serving a downlink TCP flow, the transmission of the uplink ACK, which is performed over a separate unidirectional connection, incurs additional bandwidth-request/allocation delay. Thus, it increases the round trip time of the downlink TCP flow and results in the decrease of throughput accordingly. First, we derive an analytical model to investigate the effect of the uplink bandwidth-request/allocation delay on the downlink TCP throughput. Second, we propose a simple, yet effective, bidirectional bandwidth-allocation scheme that combines proactive bandwidth allocation with piggyback bandwidth request. The proposed scheme reduces unnecessary bandwidth-request delay and the relevant signaling overhead due to proactive allocation; meanwhile, it maintains high efficiency of uplink bandwidth usage by using piggyback request. Moreover, our proposed scheme is quite simple and practical; it can be simply implemented in the base station without requiring any modification in the subscriber stations or resorting to any cross-layer signaling mechanisms. The simulation results ascertain that the proposed approach significantly increases the downlink TCP throughput and the uplink bandwidth efficiency.     

Supporting multimedia streaming and best‐effort data transmission over IEEE 802.11e EDCA

As demand for broadband multimedia wireless services increases, improving quality of service (QoS) of the widely deployed IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) has become crucial. To support the QoS required by a wide range of applications, the IEEE 802.11 working group has defined a new standard: IEEE 802.11e. In this paper, we propose a measurement‐based dynamic media time allocation (MBDMTA) scheme combined with a concatenating window scheme to support real‐time variable bit rate (rt‐VBR) video and best‐effort (BE) data transmission using IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA). To provide the QoS guarantee for rt‐VBR video, the proposed MBDMTA scheme dynamically assigns channel time to the rt‐VBR video based on the estimate of the required network resources. On the other hand, the concatenating window scheme controls the contention window (CW) ranges of different priority flows such that real‐time services always have higher channel access probability, thus achieving the capability of preemptive priorities. In addition, the concatenating window scheme preserves fairness among flows of the same class and attains high channel utilization under different network conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the throughput and delay performance improve significantly for the transmission of rt‐VBR video and BE traffic as compared to those for the 802.11e EDCA specification. It is also revealed that combining the two proposed schemes provides seamless integration and reliable transmission of digital video and data service within the 802.11e EDCA framework. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards providing optimal energy‐efficiency and throughput for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

IEEE 802.11 wireless network standard has become one of the most used wireless networking technologies for smart devices as it offers mobility support and low cost deployment. However, these devices deeply rely on the energy provided by their batteries, which results in limited running time. IEEE 802.11 network standard provides stations with carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance for the medium access. Yet it results in stations to consume an important amount of power. Therefore, minimizing WiFi‐based energy consumption in smart devices has been received substantial attention in both academia and industry. Accordingly, this paper * proposes a novel beacon‐based energy‐efficient collision‐free medium access control protocol for any type of IEEE 802.11 stations, regardless of being stationary or mobile, or having different amount of traffic flow, transmission rates, or traffic types. The proposed scheme is valid for all types of low or wide bandwidth, single or multiuser multiple‐input multiple‐output WLAN channels, such as IEEE 802.11a\b\g\n\ac. In the proposed scheme, energy saving is achieved, enabling stations to transmit on the right time and maintaining stations in the doze state during a predetermined sleep_time interval after each successful frame transmission, by making use of modified control and management frames of the standard IEEE 802.11 protocol. The proposed scheme reduces the probability of collisions and may allow stations to enter the collision‐free state, regardless of the number of stations on the channel and their traffic types. Widespread simulations have been executed to validate the efficiency of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly increases overall throughput and reduces power consumption of stations over IEEE 802.11 WLANs.     

An adaptive p-persistent MAC scheme for multimedia WLAN

The letter proposes an adaptive p-persistent-based (APP) medium access control (MAC) scheme for the IEEE 802.11e distributed WLAN supporting multimedia services. The APP MAC scheme adaptively gives differentiated permission probabilities to transmission stations which are in different access category and with various waiting delay. Simulation results show that the APP MAC scheme can improve the performance of multimedia WLAN, such as small voice packet dropping probability, low delay variation, and high system throughput, compared to conventional MAC algorithms     

Model-based admission control for IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access

IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is a distributed medium access scheme based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. In this paper, a model-based admission control (MBAC) scheme that performs real-timely at medium access control (MAC) layer is proposed for the decision of accepting or rejecting requests for adding traffic streams to an IEEE 802.11e EDCA wireless local area network (WLAN). The admission control strategy is implemented in access point (AP), which employs collision probability and access delay measures from active flows to estimate throughput and packet delay of each traffic class by the proposed unsaturation analytical model. Simulation results prove accuracy of the proposed analytical model and effectiveness of MBAC scheme.     

802.11ax系统中基于传输延迟的多用户调度与资源分配算法

IEEE 802.11ax系统中站点(Station,STA)数量众多和潜在的高数据包冲突率导致无线局域网通信效率显著降低,本文针对上行多用户传输中的无效帧填充问题,以每轮传输中用户组的传输延迟为优化目标,提出一种多用户调度和资源分配算法.基于OFDMA上行调度接入中动态传输时间的帧交互方案,接入点(Access Po...     

A dynamic location management service for group applications in cellular networks

To cope with the increasing demand of multimedia applications, new IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks devices have been defined such as IEEE 802.11aa and IEEE 802.11ac. The former proposes new intra-access categories (AC) differentiation based on stream classification service (SCS) scheme. The latter standard allows simultaneous downlink transmissions thanks to downlink multi-user MIMO technology and sharing transmission opportunity (TXOP) period scheme. In this paper, we focus on the basis of this technique and the behavior of the access point (AP) to manage the multi-user access. Then, we propose a hybrid access mechanism entitled multi-user multi-cast access mechanism (MUMAM) that supports downlink multi-user transmissions while considering intra-AC differentiation. MUMAN considers SCS scheme to prioritize between multicast and unicast flows of an AC and follows transmissions based on IEEE 802.11ac TXOP sharing technique. Extensive simulation and analysis show that MUMAM has a significant positive impact on delay and throughput performance of different AC(s).     

Packet telephony support for the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN

Packet telephony is one of the most promising applications in the Internet. In this paper, we propose a modified MAC protocol supporting voice traffic over the IEEE 802.11 WLAN. The proposed scheme adapts the power-saved mode of the IEEE 802.11 specifications in such a way that it approaches the TDM access mode carrying voice traffic, and is compatible with the IEEE 802.11 standard. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme does not degrade the performance of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN using the DCF and also provides good voice quality     

A novel self‐adaptive transmission scheme over an IEEE 802.11 WLAN for supporting multi‐service

The IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) media access control (MAC) specification is a hybrid protocol of random access and polling when both distributed coordination function (DCF) and point coordination function (PCF) are used. Data traffic is transmitted with the DCF, while voice transmission is carried out with the PCF. Based on the performance analysis of the MAC protocol for integrated data and voice transmission by simulation, this paper puts forward a self‐adaptive transmission scheme to support multi‐service over the IEEE 802.11 WLAN. The simulation results show that, on the premise of satisfying the maximum allowable delay of packet voice, the self‐adaptive transmission scheme can improve the data traffic performance and increase the WLAN capacity through dynamic and appropriate adjustment of the protocol parameters. Especially, voice traffic is sensitive to delay jitter, and the self‐adaptive scheme can effectively decrease it. Finally, it is worth noting that the adaptive scheme is easy to be realized, whereas no change in the MAC protocol is needed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bandwidth utilization efficiency enhancement for OFDM‐based WSN

Normally IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) is used for mainly downlink traffic applications. However in the upper tier of 2‐tier (WiMAX‐WiFi) wireless sensor network, the uplink bandwidth faces bottlenecks for high throughput. In this paper, a solution has been proposed for this limitation of uplink bandwidth allocation through the use of queuing theoretic performance modeling. A Markov‐modulated Poisson process traffic model has been formed for orthogonal frequency division multiple access‐based transmission along with discrete time Markov chain system model for queuing. A downlink traffic pattern has been defined for wireless sensor network nodes. Analytical methods are used to estimate the performance parameters like throughput, delay, and probability of packet drop for resource allocation. An algorithm is formulated to find out minimum resource requirement for downlink and to transfer rest of the resources to uplink bandwidth allocation, for throughput enhancement. Uplink frame utilization is determined through another discrete time Markov chain model for adaptive triggering between the proposed maximum and the normal downlink to uplink ratio operations, for efficient distribution of bandwidth resources. Algorithm and simulation results prove outstanding improvement in the uplink throughput around 50%, without degrading the downlink throughput.     

Exploiting the channel using uninterrupted collision‐free MAC adaptation over IEEE 802.11 WLANs

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) have reached an important stage and become a common technology for wireless access due to its low cost, ease of deployment, and mobility support. In parallel with the extensive growth of WLANs, the development of an efficient medium access control protocol that provides both high throughput performance for data traffic and quality of service support for real‐time applications has become a major focus in WLAN research. The IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Functions (DCF/EDCA) provide contention‐based distributed channel access mechanisms for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of these mechanisms may drop dramatically because of high collision probabilities as the number of active stations increases. In this paper, we propose an adaptive collision‐free MAC adaptation. The proposed scheme prevents collisions and allows stations to enter the collision‐free state regardless of the traffic load (saturated or unsaturated) and the number of stations on the medium. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme dramatically enhances the overall throughput and supports quality of service for real‐time services over 802.11‐based WLANs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and implementation of CLASS: A Cross-Layer ASSociation scheme for wireless mesh networks

This paper focuses on the design and implementation of CLASS, a Cross-Layer Association scheme for IEEE 802.11-based multi-hop wireless mesh networks. The widely-used association strategy in traditional IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs allows a Mobile Station (MS) to scan wireless access links and then associate with the Access Point (AP) that has the best Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) value. Unlike traditional wireless LANs, IEEE 802.11-based wireless mesh networks consist of a multi-hop wireless backhaul. As such, the performance experienced by an MS after association with a specific Mesh Access Point (MAP) depends heavily on the conditions of both the access link (e.g., traffic load of associated stations, the frame error rate between an MS and an MAP) and the mesh backhaul (e.g., end-to-end latency and asymmetric uplink/downlink transportation costs). That is, selecting the MAP that yields the “best” performance depends on several factors and cannot be determined solely on the RSSI of the MS-MAP access link. CLASS uses an end-to-end airtime cost metric to determine the MAP to which an MS should associate. The airtime cost metric is based on the IEEE 802.11s, and comprises the access link airtime cost and the backhaul airtime cost. The proposed association scheme considers the frame error rate for various packet sizes, the available bandwidth on the access link after the association of the new MS, and the asymmetric uplink and downlink transportation costs on the backhaul. All experimental results are based on actual Linux-base testbed implementation. We also implement a general Cross-Layer Service Middleware (CLSM) module that is used to monitor network conditions and gather relevant metrics and factor values. Experimental results show that the proposed association scheme is able to identify the MAP which yields the highest end-to-end network performance for the mobile stations after their associations.     

Context Aware Inter-BSS Handoff in IEEE 802.11 Networks: Efficient Resource Utilization and Performance Improvement

IEEE 802.11 has become very popular wireless technology to offer high speed Internet access at public places called the ‘Hot-Spots’. This has enabled users to access multimedia and other real time applications using wireless local area networks (WLAN). In IEEE 802.11 WLAN technology, associations between a mobile station and an access point (AP) is controlled by the mobile station, allowing the station to select an AP with the strongest signal in terms of either ‘Received Signal Strength Identifier’ or ‘Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio’. In real time scenarios, the traffic patterns of mobile users are dynamic in nature. This leads to a situation where the traffic loads on the APs are unevenly distributed in the WLAN. Such imbalance in traffic load causes severe degradation in performance of the applications running on the mobile stations associated with the overloaded APs. In this paper, we propose a scheme which dynamically improves the performance of the overloaded APs by handing off some of its associated stations to nearby APs. This handoff decision is taken by an AP in assistance with the mobile stations. The effectiveness of the load distribution through dynamic hand-over in a WLAN is analyzed through theoretical analysis. Simulation results show the overall improvements in terms of delay, throughput and number of stations that an AP can support. The performance improvement in the proposed scheme is also justified through the results obtained from a IEEE 802.11 WLAN testbed.     

Measurement-Based Achievable Throughput Estimation in IEEE 802.11a WLANs

Knowledge of dynamically changing achievable throughput is important in the design of an adaptive QoS-provisioning system over WLANs. In this letter, we introduce a novel measurement-based throughput estimation scheme and its practical realization for IEEE 802.11a WLAN environment. By utilizing traffic statistics measurements at the wireless AP (access point) in a timely manner, the proposed scheme estimates idle (i.e., remaining) channel time and converts it into available min/max throughput guidelines. Prototype realization in a Linux-based testbed verifies that the proposed scheme can estimate the available throughput with precision.     

100+ VoIP Calls on 802.11b: The Power of Combining Voice Frame Aggregation and Uplink-Downlink Bandwidth Control in Wireless LANs

The bandwidth efficiency of voice over IP (VoIP) traffic on the IEEE 802.11 WLAN is notoriously low. VoIP over 802.11 incurs high bandwidth cost for voice frame packetization and MAC/PHY framing, which is aggravated by channel access overhead. For instance, 10 calls with the G.729 codec can barely be supported on 802.11b with acceptable QoS - less than 2% efficiency. As WLANs and VoIP services become increasingly widespread, this inefficiency must be overcome. This paper proposes a solution that boosts the efficiency high enough to support a significantly larger number of calls than existing schemes, with fair call quality. The solution comes in two parts: adaptive frame aggregation and uplink/downlink bandwidth equalization. The former reduces the absolute number of MAC frames according to the link congestion level, and the latter balances the bandwidth usage between the access point (AP) and wireless stations. When used in combination, they yield superior performance, for instance, supporting more than 100 VoIP calls over an IEEE 802.11b link. The authors demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach through extensive simulation, and validate the simulation through analysis.     

A cellular wireless local area network with QoS guarantees for heterogeneous traffic

A wireless local area network (WLAN) or a cell with quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees for various types of traffic is considered. A centralized (i.e., star) network is adopted as the topology of a cell which consists of a base station and a number of mobile clients. Dynamic Time Division Duplexed (TDD) transmission is used, and hence, the same frequency channel is time-shared for downlink and uplink transmissions under the dynamic control of the base station. We divide traffic into two classes: class I (real-time) and II (non-real-time). Whenever there is no eligible class-I traffic for transmission, class-II traffic which requires no delay-bound guarantees is transmitted, while uplink transmissions are controlled with a reservation scheme. Class-I traffic which requires a bounded delay and guaranteed throughput is handled with the framing strategy (Golestani, IEEE J. Selected Areas Commun. 9(7), 1991) which consists of a smoothness traffic model and the stop-and-go queueing scheme. We also establish the admission test for adding new class-I connections. We present a modified framing strategy for class-I voice uplink transmissions which utilizes the wireless link efficiently at the cost of some packet losses. Finally, we present the performance (average delay and throughput) evaluation of the reservation scheme for class-II traffic using both analytical calculations and simulations. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Beacon-Based Collision-Free Channel Access Scheme for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11 based WLAN standard, distributed coordination function is the fundamental medium access control (MAC) technique. It employs a CSMA/CA with random binary exponential backoff algorithm and provides contention-based distributed channel access for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of this mechanism drops dramatically due to random structure of the backoff process, high collision probability and frame errors. That is why development of an efficient MAC protocol, providing both high throughput for data traffic and quality of service (QoS) support for real-time applications, has become a major focus in WLAN research. In this paper, we propose an adaptive beacon-based collision-free MAC adaptation. The proposed scheme makes use of beacon frames sent periodically by access point, lets stations enter the collision-free state and reduces the number of idle slots regardless of the number of stations and their traffic load (saturated or unsaturated) on the medium. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme dramatically enhances the overall throughput and supports QoS by reducing the delay, delay variation and dropping probability of frames.     

Adaptive downlink and uplink channel split ratio determination for TCP-based best effort traffic in TDD-based WiMAX networks

In this paper, we study the determination of downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) channel split ratio for Time Division Duplex (TDD)-based IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) wireless networks. In a TDD system, uplink and downlink transmissions share the same frequency at different time intervals. The TDD framing in WiMAX is adaptive in the sense that the downlink to uplink bandwidth ratio may vary with time. In this work, we focus on TCP based traffic and explore the impact of improper bandwidth allocation to DL and UL channels on the performance of TCP. We then propose an Adaptive Split Ratio (ASR) scheme which adjusts the bandwidth ratio of DL to UL adaptively according to the current traffic profile, wireless interference, and transport layer parameters, so as to maximize the aggregate throughput of TCP based traffic. Our scheme can also cooperate with the Base Station (BS) scheduler to throttle the TCP source when acknowledgements (ACKs) are transmitted infrequently. The performance of the proposed ASR scheme is validated via ns^-2 simulations. The results show that our scheme outperforms static allocation (such as the default value specified in the WiMAX standard and other possible settings in existing access networks) in terms of higher aggregate throughput and better adaptivity to network dynamics.     

A Cross-layer Dual Queue Approach for Improving TCP Fairness in Infrastructure WLANs

Fairness is one of the most important performance measures in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), where channel is accessed through competition. In this paper, we focus on the fairness problem between TCP uplink and downlink flows in infrastructure WLANs from the cross-layer perspective. First, we show that there exists a notable discrepancy between throughput of uplink flow and that of downlink flow, and discuss its root cause from the standpoint of different responses to TCP data packet drop and TCP ACK packet drop at the access point (AP) buffer. In order to mitigate this unfairness, we propose a dual queue scheme, which works in a cross-layer manner. It employs two separate queues at the AP, one for the data packets of downlink TCP flows and another for the ACK packets of uplink TCP flows, and selects these queues with appropriate probabilities so that TCP per-flow fairness is improved. Moreover, we analyze the behavior of the dual queue scheme and derive throughputs of uplink and downlink flows. Based on this analysis, we obtain the optimal queue selection probabilities for fairness. Extensive simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme is effective and useful in resolving the TCP unfairness problem without deteriorating overall utilization.