Protection of Fairness for Multimedia Traffic Streams in a Non-cooperative Wireless LAN Setting

A single-channel, single-hop wireless LAN (WLAN) providing communication for a set of stations is considered in an ad-hoc configuration, using a distributed MAC protocol synchronised to a common slotted time axis. A framework for a non-cooperative setting is outlined featuring a number of non-cooperative stations intent on stealing the channel bandwidth for their multimedia traffic streams. The packet scheduling policy and station strategies being logically separate in such a setting, it is argued that protection of fairness for cooperative stations should rely on suitable redefinition of the scheduling policy so as to invoke a non-cooperative game between the competing stations with a possibly fair and efficient Nash equilibrium. An example of such a policy, called EB/ECD-?, is given and evaluated via simulation against a reference policy resembling the elimination-yield procedure of HIPERLAN/1.