Evaluation of quality of service schemes for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs

• Published in: 26th Annual IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2001): Proceedings pp. 348 - 351
• Main Authors: Lindgren, A., Almquist, A., Schelen, O.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2001
• Series: Conference on Local Computer Networks. Proceedings
• Subjects: Computer science; Computer simulation; Current measurement; Delay effects; Dependable Communication and Computation Systems; Kommunikations- och beräkningssystem; Local area networks; Quality of service; Road accidents; Throughput; Time measurement; Wireless LAN
• ISBN: 0769513212; 9780769513218
• ISSN: 0742-1303
• DOI: 10.1109/LCN.2001.990806

This paper evaluates four mechanisms for providing service differentiation in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs, the point coordinator function (PCF) of IEEE 802.11, the enhanced distributed coordinator function (EDCF) of the proposed IEEE 802.11e extension to IEEE 802.11, distributed fair scheduling (DFS), and Blackburst using the ns-2 simulator. The metrics used in the evaluation are throughput, medium utilization, collision rate, average access delay, and delay distribution for a variable load of real time and background traffic. The PCF performance is comparably low, while the EDCF performs much better. The best performance is achieved by Blackburst. The DFS provides relative differentiation and consequently avoids starvation of low priority traffic.