We analyze in this paper the fairness of the 802.11 DCF (distributed coordination function) access method. Short-term fairness is an important property of a MAC layer for obtaining short delays. We show that contrary to the common wisdom, a 802.11 cell with two hosts does not exhibit short-term unfairness. We propose a new fairness index: the number of inter-transmissions that other hosts may perform between two transmissions of a given host. By means of this index, we analyze the fairness of 802.11 for the case of two hosts and derive the probability distribution of the number of inter-transmissions. Our results show that even on the short term time scale the 802.11 DCF access method provides fairness to competing hosts. When compared with slotted ALOHA, a multiple access randomized protocol with good fairness properties, 802.11 presents even better fairness. To validate the model, we compare the analytical results with experimental histograms obtained via simulations and measurements.

We propose to provide QoS differentiation at the IP level based on the DiffServ model over the standard distributed coordination function (DCF) method of 802.11. By constraining the output rate of each host in a cell via DiffServ scheduling and traffic shaping mechanisms, we can keep the 802.11 network in the state of nonsaturation so that the time-sensitive expedited forwarding (EF) class benefits from stable short delays. We analyze the performance of 802.11b to find how we should constrain the rate of DiffServ sources and present extensive measurements that show how the QoS differentiation is achieved.

The performance of the IEEE 802.11b wireless local area networks is analyzed. We have observed that when some mobile hosts use a lower bit rate than the others, the performance of all hosts is considerably degraded. Such a situation is a common case in wireless local area networks in which a host far away from an access point is subject to important signal fading and interference. To cope with this problem, the host changes its modulation type, which degrades its bit rate to some lower value. Typically, 802.11b products degrade the bit rate from 11 Mb/s to 5.5, 2, or 1 Mb/s when repeated unsuccessful frame transmissions are detected. In such a case, a host transmitting for example at 1 Mb/s reduces the throughput of all other hosts transmitting at 11 Mb/s to a low value below 1 Mb/s. The basic CSMA/CA channel access method is at the root of this anomaly: it guarantees an equal long term channel access probability to all hosts. When one host captures the channel for a long time because its bit rate is low, it penalizes other hosts that use the higher rate. We analyze the anomaly theoretically by deriving simple expressions for the useful throughput, validate them by means of simulation, and compare with several performance measurements.

International audience