THROUGHPUT AND LATENCY PERFORMANCE OF IEEE 802.11E WITH 802.11A, 802.11B, AND 802.11G PHYSICAL LAYERS

IEEE 802.11e is an amendment of the medium-access control (MAC) layer of the standard for wireless local area networking IEEE 802.11. The goal of 802.11e is to provide 802.11 networks with Quality of Service (QoS). 802.11 has three physical layers (PHY) of practical importance: 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g. 802.11a and 802.11g provide data rates between 6 and 54 Mbps, and 802.11b provides data rates of 5.5 Mbps and 11 Mbps. However these data rates are not the actual throughput. The actual throughput that a user will experience will be lower. The throughput depends on both the PHY and MAC layers. It is important to estimate what exactly is the throughput when the physical layer is 802.11a, 802.11b, or 802.11g, and the MAC layer is 802.11e. In other words, how does providing QoS change the throughput for each of the three physical layers? In this paper we provide answers to this problem. Analytic formulae are derived. The maximum achievable throughput and minimum delay involved in data transfers are determined. The obtained results have further significance for the design of high-throughput wireless protocols.