Dynamic packet aggregation to solve performance anomaly in 802.11 wireless networks

In the widely used 802.11 standard, the so-called performance anomaly is a well-known issue. Several works have tried to solve this problem by introducing mechanisms such as packet fragmentation, backoff adaptation, or packet aggregation during a fixed time interval. In this paper, we propose a novel approach solving the performance anomaly problem by packet aggregation using a dynamic time interval, which depends on the busy time of the wireless medium. Our solution differs from other proposition in the literature because of this dynamic time interval, which allows increasing fairness, reactivity, and in some cases efficiency. In this article, we emphasize the performance evaluation of our proposal.

[1]  Andrzej Duda,et al.  Idle sense: an optimal access method for high throughput and fairness in rate diverse wireless LANs , 2005, SIGCOMM '05.

[2]  Edward W. Knightly,et al.  Opportunistic media access for multirate ad hoc networks , 2002, MobiCom '02.

[3]  John V. Guttag,et al.  Time-based Fairness Improves Performance in Multi-Rate WLANs , 2004, USENIX Annual Technical Conference, General Track.

[4]  R. Jain Throughput fairness index : An explanation , 1999 .

[5]  Dirk Grunwald,et al.  A Practical Cross-Layer Mechanism For Fairness in 802.11 Networks , 2004, First International Conference on Broadband Networks.

[6]  Martin Heusse,et al.  Performance anomaly of 802.11b , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).