To expand the support for applications with QoS requirements in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), the 802.11E task group was formed to enhance the current IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. The multipolling mechanism was discussed in the task group, but some problems remain unsolved. In this paper, we show a novel design of the multipolling mechanism with the advantages of high channel utilization and low implementation overhead. In our proposed mechanism, wireless stations use a priority-based contention scheme to coordinate in themselves the transmission order on the channel. Moreover, we propose a polling schedule mechanism for our proposed multipoll to serve real-time traffic with constant and variable bit rates. The bounded delay requirement of the real-time traffic can be satisfied in our scheduling model. We establish an admission test to estimate the system capacity and to determine whether a new connection can be accepted. We study the performance of our proposed mechanism analytically, as well as through simulated experiments. The results show that the proposed mechanism is efficient than the one discussed in the IEEE 802.11E task group.

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IEEE 802.11, the standard of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), allows the coexistence of asynchronous and time-bounded traffic using the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) and Point Coordination Function (PCF) modes of operations, respectively. In spite of its increasing popularity in real-world applications, the protocol suffers from the lack of any priority and access control policy to cope with various types of multimedia traffic as well as user mobility (handoff).To expand support for applications with Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements, the 802.11E Task Group was formed to enhance the original IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. However, the problem of choosing the right set of MAC parameters and QoS mechanism to provide predictable QoS in IEEE 802.11 networks is still remain unsolved. In this paper, we propose a polling with non-preemptive priority based access control scheme for the IEEE 802.11 protocol. Under such a scheme, modifying the DCF access method in the contention period supports multiple levels of priorities such that user mobility can be supported

With the proliferation of wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies, wireless Internet access via public hotspots will become a necessity in the near future. In outdoor areas where the installation of a large number of wired access points is practically or economically infeasible, mobile users located at the edge of the network communicate with the access point at a very low rate and in turn waste network resources. In this work, we promote the use of tetherless relay points (TRPs) to improve the throughput of a WLAN in such environments. We first provide a high level description on how to integrate TRPs in a multi-rate WLAN architecture. We then propose an integer-programming optimization formulation and an iterative approach to compute the best placement of a fixed number of TRPs. Finally, we show in numerical analysis, through a case study based on relay-enabled rate adaptation and IEEE 802.11-like multi-rate physical model with Rayleigh fading, that for a wide range of system parameters, significant performance gain can be achieved when TRPs are strategically installed in the network.

Abstract—The IEEE 802.11 standard defines two coordination functions: distributed coordination function (DCF) and point coordination function (PCF). These coordination functions coordinate the shared wireless medium. The PCF uses a centralized polling-based channel access method to support time-bounded services. To design an efficient polling scheme, the point coordinator (PC) needs to obtain information about the current transmission status and channel condition for each station. To reduce overhead caused by polling frames, it is better to poll all stations using one polling frame containing the transmission schedule. In this paper, we propose an efficient polling scheme, referred to as two-step multipolling (TS-MP), for the PCF in wireless local area networks (WLANs). In this new scheme, we propose to use two multipolling frames with different purposes. The first frame is broadcast to collect information such as the numbers of pending frames and the physical-layer transmission rates for the communication links among all stations. The second frame contains a polling sequence for data transmissions designed based on the collected information. This frame is broadcast to all stations. Extensive simulation studies show that TS-MP not only overcomes the aforementioned deficiencies, but also help to implement rate adaptation over time-varying wireless channel. Index Terms — Multipolling (MP), point coordination function (PCF), rate-adaptive medium access control (MAC), wireless local area network (WLAN). I.

Integrating wireless LAN (WLAN) techniques with the third generation cellular networks has become a promising way to improve the performance of wireless systems. As WLANs play an important role in such heterogeneous systems, the performance of WLANs becomes important to the whole system. It is well known that WLANs provide a physical layer multi-rate capability, and hence MAC layer mechanisms are needed to exploit this capability. In this paper, we propose a novel MAC layer relay-enabled point coordination function (PCF) protocol, called rPCF, to exploit the physical layer multi-rate capability. Since WLAN supports multiple data rates in response to different channel conditions, data packets may be delivered faster through a relay node than through the direct link if the direct link has low quality and low rate. To enable MAC layer relay, the access point needs to collect information about the channel conditions, and notify the mobile nodes which data rate to use and whether to transmit the data through a relay station. We design protocols to achieve this goal and refine these protocols to minimize the control overhead. Simulation results show that rPCF can significantly improve the system performance in terms of system throughput and transmission delay by adding only a negligible control overhead.

Currently, the Internet is experiencing the grid accelerated file transfer phenomenon (swarming). It has gained immense popularity and dominance through BitTorrent and has thus far accounted for a substantial amount of the total Internet traffic. In this paper, we borrow ideas liberally from the literature to argue that the use of swarming protocol for traffic/content delivery within the wireless networking milieu is inefficient. We generalize the problem into the delivery of persistent bidirectional peer traffic in wireless hierarchical topology, and further argue that current approaches for fix-network augmented broadband wireless access (e.g. 802.11x) has left the problem ill-addressed. A novel system architecture is sketched to rectify such a shortcoming. Hence, the purpose of this short position paper is to stimulate ideas and proposals that may result into important avenues of future research.

Integrating wireless LAN (WLAN) techniques with the third generation cellular networks has become a promising way to improve the performance of wireless systems. As WLANs play an important role in such heterogeneous systems, the performance of WLANs becomes important to the whole system. It is well known that WLANs provide a physical layer multi-rate capability, and hence MAC layer mechanisms are needed to exploit this capability. In this paper, we propose a novel MAC layer relay-enabled point coordination function (PCF) protocol, called rPCF, to exploit the physical layer multi-rate capability. Since WLAN

It is well known that IEEE 802.11 provides a physical layer multi-rate capability. In this paper, we propose a novel MAC layer relay-enabled point coordination function (PCF) protocol, called #PCF, to exploit this capability. With multiple data rates in response to different channel conditions, if the direct link has low data rate, data packets may be delivered faster through a relay node. To enable MAC layer relay, the access point needs to collect information about the channel conditions, and notify mobile nodes which data rate to use and whether to use a relay node. We design protocols to achieve this goal and refine these protocols to minimize the control overhead. Simulation results show that #PCF can significantly improve the system performance in terms of system throughput and transmission delay with a very small control overhead.

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