Skip to main content
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
Download PDF

Towards Scalable MAC Design for High-Speed Wireless LANs

EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking volume 2007, Article number: 012597 (2007) Cite this article

Abstract

The growing popularity of wireless LANs has spurred rapid evolution in physical-layer technologies and wide deployment in diverse environments. The ability of protocols in wireless data networks to cater to a large number of users, equipped with high-speed wireless devices, becomes ever critical. In this paper, we propose a token-coordinated random access MAC (TMAC) framework that scales to various population sizes and a wide range of high physical-layer rates. TMAC takes a two-tier design approach, employing centralized, coarse-grained channel regulation, and distributed, fine-grained random access. The higher tier organizes stations into multiple token groups and permits only the stations in one group to contend for the channel at a time. This token mechanism effectively controls the maximum intensity of channel contention and gracefully scales to diverse population sizes. At the lower tier, we propose an adaptive channel sharing model working with the distributed random access, which largely reduces protocol overhead and exploits rate diversity among stations. Results from analysis and extensive simulations demonstrate that TMAC achieves a scalable network throughput as user size increases from 15 to over 300. At the same time, TMAC improves the overall throughput of wireless LANs by approximately 100% at link capacity of 216 Mb/s, as compared with the widely adopted DCF scheme.

[12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940]

References

  1. IEEE 802.11n: Wireless LAN MAC and PHY Specifications: Enhancements for Higher Throughput, 200

  2. IEEE 802.11n: Sync Proposal Technical Specification, doc. IEEE 802.11-04/0889r6., May 200

  3. O'Hara B, Petrick A: IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer's Companion. IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, USA; 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  4. IEEE Std 802.11a-1999—part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY

  5. Sadeghi B, Kanodia V, Sabharwal A, Knightly E: Opportunistic media access for multirate ad hoc networks. Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM '02), September 2002, Atlanta, Ga, USA 24-35.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Kleinrock L, Tobagi FA: Packet switching in radio channels—part I: carrier sense multiple-access modes and their throughput-delay characteristics. IEEE Transactions on Communications 1975,23(12):1400-1416. 10.1109/TCOM.1975.1092768

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Tobagi FA, Kleinrock L: Packet switching in radio channels—part III: polling and (dynamic) split-channel reservation multiple access. IEEE Transactions on Communications 1976,24(8):832-845. 10.1109/TCOM.1976.1093393

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Ji Z, Yang Y, Zhou J, Takai M, Bagrodia R: Exploiting medium access diversity in rate adaptive wireless LANs. Proceedings of the 10th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM '04), September-October 2004, Philadelphia, Pa, USA 345-359.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Hiperlan/2 EN 300 652 V1.2.1(1998-07), Function Specification, ETS

  10. Levy H, Sidi M: Polling systems: applications, modeling, and optimization. IEEE Transactions on Communications 1990,38(10):1750-1760. 10.1109/26.61446

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bharghavan V, Demers A, Shenker S, Zhang L: MACAW: a media access protocol for wireless LAN's. Proceedings of the Conference on Communications Architectures, Protocols and Applications (SIGCOMM '94), August-September 1994, London, UK 212-225.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,65816,00.html

  13. Bianchi G: Performance analysis of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 2000,18(3):535-547. 10.1109/49.840210

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. IEEE Std 802.11e/D8.0—part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY

  15. Arbaugh W, Yuan Y: Scalable and efficient MAC for next-generation wireless data networks. Computer Science Department, University of Maryland, College Park, Md, USA; 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kwon Y, Fang Y, Latchman H: A novel MAC protocol with fast collision resolution for wireless LANs. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Joint Conference on the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM '03), March-April 2003, San Francisco, Calif, USA 2: 853-862.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kim H, Hou JC: Improving protocol capacity with model-based frame scheduling in IEEE 802.11-operated WLANs. Proceedings of the 9th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM '03), September 2003, San Diego, Calif, USA 190-204.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Bharghavan V: A dynamic addressing scheme for wireless media access. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC '95), June 1995, Seattle, Wash, USA 2: 756-760.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Yuan Y, Gu D, Arbaugh W, Zhang J: High-performance MAC for high-capacity wireless LANs. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN '04), October 2004, Chicago, Ill, USA 167-172.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Cali F, Conti M, Gregori E: IEEE 802.11 protocol: design and performance evaluation of an adaptive backoff mechanism. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 2000,18(9):1774-1786. 10.1109/49.872963

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Karn P: MACA: a new channel access method for packet radio. Proceedings of the ARRL/CRRL Amateur Radio 9th Computer Networking Conference, September 1990, Ontario, Canada 134-140.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Tse D: Multiuser diversity in wireless networks: smart scheduling, dumb antennas and epidemic communication. Proceedings of the IMA Wireless Networks Workshop, August 2001

    Google Scholar 

  23. Holland G, Vaidya N, Bahl P: A rate-adaptive MAC protocol for multi-hop wireless networks. Proceedings of the 7th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM '01), July 2001, Rome, Italy 236-250.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Heusse M, Rousseau F, Guillier R, Duda A: Idle sense: an optimal access method for high throughput and fairness in rate diverse wireless LANs. Proceedings of the Conference on Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communications (SIGCOMM '05), August 2005, Philadelphia, Pa, USA 121-132.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Rapport TS: Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice. 2nd edition. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA; 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Cisco Aironet Adapter http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps4555/products_data_sheet09186a00801ebc29.html

  27. Chiu D-M, Jain R: Analysis of the increase and decrease algorithms for congestion avoidance in computer networks. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 1989,17(1):1-14. 10.1016/0169-7552(89)90019-6

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  28. Bononi L, Conti M, Gregori E: Runtime optimization of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs performance. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 2004,15(1):66-80. 10.1109/TPDS.2004.1264787

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Tobagi FA, Kleinrock L: Packet switching in radio channels—part IV: stability considarations and dynamic control in carrier sense multiple access. IEEE Transactions on Communications 1977,25(10):1103-1119. 10.1109/TCOM.1977.1093733

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Cali F, Conti M, Gregori E: Dynamic tuning of the IEEE 802.11 protocol to achieve a theoretical throughput limit. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 2000,8(6):785-799. 10.1109/90.893874

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Tan G, Guttag J: Time-based fairness improves performance in multi-rate WLANs. Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, June-July 2004, Boston, Mass, USA 269-282.

    Google Scholar 

  32. IEEE 802.5: Defines the MAC layer for Token-Ring Network

  33. Cidon I, Sidi M: Distributed assignment algorithms for multihop packet radio networks. IEEE Transactions on Computers 1989,38(10):1353-1361. 10.1109/12.35830

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Karrer R, Sabharwal A, Knightly E: Enabling large-scale wireless broadband: the case for TAPs. Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets-II '03), November 2004, Cambridge, Mass, USA

    Google Scholar 

  35. Scalable Network Technologies http://scalable-networks.com/

  36. Vaidya N, So J: A multi-channel MAC protocol for ad hoc wireless networks. Department of Electrical and Computer Engeneering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Ill, USA; 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Doerr C, Neufeld M, Fifield J, Weingart T, Sicker DC, Grunwald D: MultiMAC—an adaptive MAC framework for dynamic radio networking. Proceedings of the 1st IEEE International Symposium on New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN '05), November 2005, Baltimore, Md, USA 548-555.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Rao A, Stoica I: An overlay MAC layer for 802.11 networks. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys '05), June 2005, Seattle, Wash, USA 135-148.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  39. Farago A, Myers AD, Syrotiuk VR, Zaruba GV: Meta-MAC protocols: automatic combination of MAC protocols to optimize performance for unknown conditions. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 2000,18(9):1670-1681. 10.1109/49.872955

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Sharp BA, Grindrod EA, Camm DA: Hybrid TDMA/CSMA protocol for self managing packet radio networks. Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Annual International Conference on Universal Personal Communications (ICUPC '95), November 1995, Tokyo, Japan 929-933.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Yuan Yuan & William A. Arbaugh

  2. Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Songwu Lu

Authors
  1. Yuan Yuan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. William A. Arbaugh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Songwu Lu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuan Yuan.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Yuan, Y., Arbaugh, W.A. & Lu, S. Towards Scalable MAC Design for High-Speed Wireless LANs. J Wireless Com Network 2007, 012597 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/12597

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/12597

Keywords