A Proposal for Dynamic Frequency Sharing in Wireless Networks

Wireless networks are today employed as complementary access technology, implemented on the last hop towards the Internet end-user. The shared media that wireless deployments provide and which is relevant to interconnect multiple users has a limited technical design, as only one device can be served per unit of time, design aspect that limits the potential applicability of wireless in dense environments. This paper proposes and evaluates a novel MAC-layer mechanism that extends current wireless networks with the possibility to perform downstream transmission to multiple devices within a single transmission time-frame, resulting in improved fairness for all devices. The mechanism, which is software-defined, is backward-compatible with current wireless standards and does not require any hardware changes. The solution has been validated in a realistic testbed, and the paper provides details concerning the computational aspects of our solution; a description of the implementation; and results extracted under different realistic scenarios in terms of throughput, packet loss, as well as jitter.