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Title

MAC access delay of IEEE 802.11 DCF

Author(s)

Sakurai, Taka;  Vu, Hai Le

Abstract

The MAC access delay in a saturated IEEE 802.11 DCF wireless LAN is analyzed. We develop a unified analytical model and obtain explicit expressions for the first two moments as well as the generating function. We show via comparison with simulation that our model accurately predicts the mean, standard deviation, and distribution of the access delay for a wide range of operating conditions. In addition, we show that the obtained generating function is much more accurate than others that have appeared in the literature. Using our model, we prove that the binary exponential backoff mechanism induces a heavy-tailed delay distribution for the case of unlimited retransmissions. We show using numerical examples that the distribution has a truncated power-law tail when a retransmission limit exists. This finding suggests that DCF is prone to long delays and not suited to carrying delay-sensitive applications.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies. Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures

Source

IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 6, no. 5 (2007), p. 1702-1710

Publication year

2007

Keyword(s)

Generating function;  Heavy tail;  IEEE 802.11;  Medium access delay;  Performance analysis;  Wireless LAN

Publisher

IEEE

ISSN

1536-1276

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2007.360372

Copyright

Copyright © 2007 IEEE. Paper reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

Full text

Peer reviewed