Article

Time-based fairness improves performance in multi-rate WLANs

Authors:

John GuttagAuthors Info & Claims

ATEC '04: Proceedings of the annual conference on USENIX Annual Technical Conference

Page 23

Published: 27 June 2004 Publication History

Abstract

The performance seen by individual clients on a wireless local area network (WLAN) is heavily influenced by the manner in which wireless channel capacity is allocated. The popular MAC protocol DCF (Distributed Coordination Function) used in 802.11 networks provides equal long-term transmission opportunities to competing nodes when all nodes experience similar channel conditions. When similar-sized packets are also used, DCF leads to equal achieved throughputs (throughput-based fairness) among contending nodes.

Because of varying indoor channel conditions, the 802.11 standard supports multiple data transmission rates to exploit the trade-off between data rate and bit error rate. This leads to considerable rate diversity, particularly when the network is congested. Under such conditions, throughput-based fairness can lead to drastically reduced aggregate throughput.

In this paper, we argue the advantages of time-based fairness, in which each competing node receives an equal share of the wireless channel occupancy time. We demonstrate that this notion of fairness can lead to significant improvements in aggregate performance while still guaranteeing that no node receives worse channel access than it would in a single-rate WLAN. We also describe our algorithm, TBR (Time-based Regulator), which runs on the AP and works with any MAC protocol to provide time-based fairness by regulating packets. Through experiments, we show that our practical and backward compatible implementation of TBR in conjunction with an existing implementation of DCF achieves time-based fairness.

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Cited By

Son JJo HNyang DNoh YSong JKim MLane NBalan R(2019)Distributed Network Resource Sharing AP in Inter-WLAN Environments (poster)Proceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services10.1145/3307334.3328637(584-585)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307334.3328637
Kafi MMouradian AVèque V(2019)On-line Client Association Scheme Based on Reinforcement Learning for WLAN Networks2019 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)10.1109/WCNC.2019.8886065(1-7)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/WCNC.2019.8886065
Cheng YXiao SLiu JGuo FQin RLi BYuan X(2018)An approximate bandwidth allocation algorithm for tradeoff between fairness and throughput in WSNWireless Networks10.1007/s11276-017-1458-524:6(2165-2177)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11276-017-1458-5
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Index Terms

Time-based fairness improves performance in multi-rate WLANs
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Design
    2. Performance
2. Networks
  1. Network properties
    1. Network structure
  2. Network services
    1. Network management

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cover image Guide Proceedings

ATEC '04: Proceedings of the annual conference on USENIX Annual Technical Conference

June 2004

572 pages

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USENIX Association

United States

Publication History

Published: 27 June 2004

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Cited By

Son JJo HNyang DNoh YSong JKim MLane NBalan R(2019)Distributed Network Resource Sharing AP in Inter-WLAN Environments (poster)Proceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services10.1145/3307334.3328637(584-585)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307334.3328637
Kafi MMouradian AVèque V(2019)On-line Client Association Scheme Based on Reinforcement Learning for WLAN Networks2019 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)10.1109/WCNC.2019.8886065(1-7)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/WCNC.2019.8886065
Cheng YXiao SLiu JGuo FQin RLi BYuan X(2018)An approximate bandwidth allocation algorithm for tradeoff between fairness and throughput in WSNWireless Networks10.1007/s11276-017-1458-524:6(2165-2177)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11276-017-1458-5
Sun XDai L(2017)Fairness-Constrained Maximum Sum Rate of Multi-Rate CSMA NetworksIEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications10.1109/TWC.2017.265311316:3(1741-1754)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TWC.2017.2653113
Touati MEl-Azouzi RCoupechoux MAltman EKelif J(2017)A Controlled Matching Game for WLANsIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications10.1109/JSAC.2017.267225835:3(707-720)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/JSAC.2017.2672258
Krishnan SChaporkar P(2017)Stochastic approximation based on-line algorithm for fairness in multi-rate wireless LANsWireless Networks10.1007/s11276-016-1243-x23:5(1563-1574)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11276-016-1243-x
Schulz-Zander JLisicki RSchmid SFeldmann AYuksel MWood T(2016)SecuSpotProceedings of the 2016 ACM Workshop on Cloud-Assisted Networking10.1145/3010079.3012015(61-66)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3010079.3012015
Lee JLee HYi YChong SKnightly EChiang M(2016)Making 802.11 DCF near-optimalIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2015.243205324:3(1745-1758)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TNET.2015.2432053
Ma XGao QMarojevic VReed J(2016)Hypergraph matching for MU-MIMO user grouping in wireless LANsAd Hoc Networks10.1016/j.adhoc.2016.05.00748:C(29-37)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.adhoc.2016.05.007
Guo KSanadhya SWoo T(2015)ViFiACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review10.1145/2721896.272190518:3(41-48)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2015
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