Parameter decision for enhancing performance of wireless lans with prioritized messages

Abstract

Distributed coordination function (DCF) is a primary random access mechanism of IEEE 802.11, which is the basic protocol of wireless LAN based on the CSMA/CA protocol. It enables fast installation with minimal management and maintenance costs and is a very robust protocol for the best effort service in wireless medium. The current DCF, however, is known to be unsuitable for real-time applications such as voice message transmission. In this paper, we focus on the performance issues of IEEE 802.11 which accommodates the prioritized messages. Existing results use the initial window size and backoff window increasing factor as tools to handle the priority of the messages. Instead, we introduce a novel scheme which chooses the backoff timer with arbitrary probabilities. By this, one can greatly reduce the backoff delay of the lower priority messages without degrading the performance of higher priority. Additionally, we provide a step-by-step procedure which determines the system parameters such as the initial window size, backoff window increasing factor, and the backoff timer choosing probabilities, guaranteeing the quality of service (QoS).