Throughput Enhancement of IEEE

802.11 WLAN for Next Generation

Communications.

T.M Nazmul Huda , Md Nur Mostofa

September 2007
Master’s Thesis
Supervisor: Doru Constantenisco

Department of Telecommunication Systems

School of Engineering
Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH)
SE-371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden.

1
This thesis work submitted to the department of
Telecommunication System, School of Engineering in pertial
fullfillment of the requirments for the degree of

M.Sc in Electrical Engineering with emphasis on

Telecommunication.

T.M Nazmul Huda Md. Nur Mostafa

741231-P131 781018-P938

School of Engineering
Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH)
Karlskrona, Sweden.
www.bth.se

2
Acknowledgments

First of all, we would like to express our heartiest gratitude to our supervisor
Duro Constantenescu, for his good guidance, support, and valuable suggestions.
He also taught us one important part of the course entitled Telesystem and
provided us with very comprehensive understanding of wireless
communications, networks and protocols. He impressed us both as a teacher and
researcher, and inspired us to carry research on Wireless Local Area Networks
(WLAN). He also taught us another course is named TCP/IP. We have learnt a
lot from him, from course lectures and from our numerous discussions.

We are very grateful to our friends who give us inspirations always to do this
research. Finally but most importantly, we would like to thank our parents for
their support, patience, blessings and understanding while we were writing this
thesis.

T.M Nazmul Huda , Md. Nur Mostafa

Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH).
371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden

3
 Research Proposal

Throughput Enhancement of IEEE 802.11 WLAN for Next

Generation Communications.

Background:

The standards of the forth generation consists a revolutionary development for mobile
communications. The goal is not only the transmission of speech and transfer of data packets,
as a co-sequence of the big expansion of the Internet, but also the support of real time audio
and video streams. These goals in combination with the growing demand of the wireless
network participants for higher bit rates, which allow the parallel operation of several
channels, set new demands for the coming communication systems.

Such networks, that were built Ad-hoc, consist of numerous mobile or fixed terminals, with
the ability to communicate with other, over direct or multi-hop links. The network
organization in different clusters and the operation succeed without any external help.
Industries are seeking higher data rate for up coming multimedia applications. So
enhancement of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols is now current issue for both ad hoc based and
infrastructure based wireless networks.

Problem Statement:

The scope of this work is to derive the performance metrics of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols
(Achievable maximum throughput and achievable minimum delay) and proposed a new MAC
scheme, which improve the total throughput performance of IEEE 802.11.

Expected result:

i) Mathematical derivation of maximum throughput and minimum delay of IEEE

802.11 MAC layer and important recommendation will be carried out from these
performance matrices.
ii) The theoretical increasing throughput of IEEE 802.11 MAC layer will be
independent on the performance matrices.
iii) Simulate the enhanced throughput of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols.

4
Supervisor and Examiner
Doru Constantinescu

Student Name:

T. M Nazmul Huda Md. Nur Mostafa

Student ID: 741231-P131 Student ID: 781018-P938
Email:tnhu05@student.bth.se Email: mnmo05@student.bth.se

5
Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1.1 Background 12
1.2 Motivation 13
1.3 Task 13
1.4 Thesis Outline 13

2. Overview of IEEE 802.11

2.1 Introduction 15
2.1.1 Architecture of IEEE 802.11
2.1.2 IEEE 802.11 Services
2.1.3 Authentication and Privacy
2.2 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) 19
2.2.1 Collision Avoidance and back off procedure
2.2.2 RTS/CTS mechanism
2.2.3 MAC frame
2.3 Point Coordination Function (PCF) 24
2.3.1 Access Procedure
2.4 Physical Layer (PHY) 26
2.5 Summary 31

3. Overhead Analysis and Throughput enhancement Schemes

3.1 Introduction 33
3.2 Overhead Analysis 33
3.3 Throughput Enhancement Schemes 39
3.3.1 Frame Aggregation
3.3.2 Burst Transmission and Acknowledgement (BTA)
3.4 Summary 47

6
4. Proposed Throughput Enhancement Schemes

4.1 Introduction 49
4.2 Overview of Extended DCF (EDCF) 49
4.3 Block Acknowledgement schemes in EDCA. 52
4.3.1 Assumptions and Analytical frame works.

4.4 Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement (FABA) Schemes.54

4.4.1 Introduction
4.4.2 Mechanism of Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement
(FABA) Schemes.
4.4.3 Algorithms for Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement
(FABA) Schemes
4.5 Summary 58

5. Performance Evaluation using simulation.

5.1 Introduction 59
5.2 Necessary Assumptions. 59
5.3 Simulating Result 60
5.4 Summary. 64

6. Conclusions and future works. 65

References

7
8
 Glossary of Acronyms

WLAN Wireless Local Area Network

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
LAN Local Area Network
MAC Medium Access Control
DCF Distributed Coordination Function
CSMA Carrier Sense Multiple Access
PCF Point Coordination Function
QoS Quality of Service
HRD Higher Data Rates
ACK Acknowledgement
PHY Physical Layer
IFS Inter-Frame Space
DLL Data Link Layer
OSI Open System Interconnection
LLC Logical Link Control
FHSS Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum
DSSS Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
BSS Basic Service Set
STA Station
DS Distribution System
ESS Extended Service Set
IBSS Independent BSS
AP Access Point
SS Station Service
DSS Distributed System Service
WEP Wired Equivalence Privacy
DIFS DCF Inter Frame Space
SIFS Short Inter Frame Space
PIFS PCF Inter Frame Space
NAV Network Allocation Vector
RTS Request To Send
CTS Clear To Send
CSMA/CA Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance
CSMA/CD Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection
ELAN Ethernet LAN
DA Destination Address
SA Source Address
TA Transmitter Address
RA Receiver Address
BSSID BSS Identifier
CRC Cyclic Redundancy Code
CFP Contention Free Period
CF-Poll Contention-Free Poll
MPDU MAC Protocols Data Unit

9
IR Infrared
BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying
DBPSK Dou BPSK
PLCP Physical Layer Convergence Protocol
PPDU PLCP Protocol Data Unit
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access
AC Access Categories
FABA Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement

10
11
Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Background

Today Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is widely used in home, office everywhere
instead of wired network. Cost benefit, mobility, high data rate, flexibility of use,
standardization, and interoperability makes it more popular. Now there are lots of versions of
IEEE 802.11 are available in market due to lower cost and easy deployment. Such as 802.11b
and 802.11a, it supports data transmission rates of up to 11 and 54 Mbps; respectively.

There are basically two types of mode of operations in wireless LAN. Firstly infrastructure
based Nomadic access and another peer-to-peer connection based Ad Hoc Networking.
Infrastructure based nomadic access is mainly a wireless hub which provide a wireless link
between mobile stations and infrastructure based core network. Another mode of operation is
ad hoc based. There is no centralized server system, which provides immediate services if
needed by peer-to-peer wireless connections.

The basic Medium Access Control (MAC) mechanism of 802.11 is called Distributed
Coordination Function (DCF). DCF is based on distributed channel access and employs
Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) protocol for the medium access. Another Optional
IEEE 802.11 access mechanism, called Point Coordination Function (PCF), based on centrally
controlled access. Now a day many wireless devices manufacturer of the 802.11 use DCF. In
very little area of PCF is hardly implemented this complex design access mechanism. Some
standards are working with security like IEEE 802.11i, some are working with Quality of
Service (QoS) like IEEE 802.11e and many of them are working with data rate, throughput
and other parameters of wireless network.

12
1.2 Motivation

In multimedia applications such as audio/video streaming, teleconferencing, Internet

telephony and interactive games demands more data rates. Industry is seeking Higher Data
Rates (HRD’s) over 100 Mbps for IEEE 802.11a extension [3], which is undergoing
discussions in IEEE 802.11 meetings. Throughput enhancement of the legacy IEEE 802.11 is
the important issue for future wireless devices. Thus, a lot of research works have been carried
out to enhance the throughput of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols for wireless network.

MAC protocol is not sufficient enough though the physical layer (PHY) data rate is
significantly high. This is due mainly to the large overheads composed of medium access
control (MAC) header, PHY preamble/header, backoff time, acknowledgement (ACK)
transmission and some inter-frame spaces (IFSs) [4]. So we have to reduce MAC overhead of
the legacy IEEE 802.11 for better throughput.

1.3 Task
The thesis focus on some parameters of infrastructure based network which are very much
involved its MAC performance and the scope of this work is to derive the performance
metrics of IEEE 802.11 (Achievable maximum throughput and achievable minimum delay)
and increasing the total throughput of IEEE 802.11. The main task of the thesis is pointed out
below.

iv) Mathematical derivation of maximum throughput and minimum delay of IEEE

802.11 MAC layer and important recommendation will be carried out from these
performance matrices.
v) The theoretical increasing throughput of IEEE 802.11 MAC layer will be
independent on the performance matrices.
vi) A propose new MAC mechanism for the enhancement of throughput of IEEE
802.11.
vii) Simulate the system throughput of proposed new MAC schemes.

1.4 Thesis Outline

The research work mainly focus on throughput enhancement of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol.
So the whole content of the thesis work emphasis on the throughput parameters. However we
have also considered the QoS issue in different cases. A new MAC schemes is proposed in the
thesis and also evaluate the performance using simulation of this new proposed MAC
schemes. In chapter 2, we discuss the overview of IEEE 802.11. Here we present DCF and

13
PCF access procedure in wireless medium and PHY layer parameter also. Chapter 3 presents
the concepts of overhead and also some important throughput enhancement schemes. In this
chapter, we specially focus on the mechanism of Frame Aggregation [4] and the mechanism
of Burst Transmission and Acknowledgement (BTA)[3]. Here we try to evaluate the
performance of current MAC protocol and also the performance evaluation of the above two
proposed enhancement schemes using simulation. Chapter 4 introduces the mechanism and
algorithm of a new MAC scheme, is called Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement
(FABA). To make it easier for understanding, we discuss the Block Acknowledgment
component before FABA schemes. Here it is important to mention that the FABA scheme is
implemented in EDCA of legacy IEEE 802.11e. In chapter 5, we try to evaluate the
performance of above all schemes using simulation, which is coded in Matlab 7.1 simulation
software. Chapter 6 contains the conclusion of this research work and also related future work
mentioned here.

14
Chapter 2

Overview of IEEE 802.11

2.1 Introduction

Work on wireless LANs within the IEEE 802 committee began in 1987 within the IEEE 802.4
group. The initial interest was in developing an ISM-based wireless LAN using the equivalent
of a token-passing bus MAC protocol. After some work, it was decided that token bus was not
suitable for controlling a radio medium without causing inefficient use of the radio frequency
spectrum. IEEE 802 then decided in 1990 to form a new working group, IEEE 802.11,
specifically devoted to wireless LANs with a charter to develop a MAC protocol and physical
medium specification. In 1997, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
released the 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards [1]. Figure 2.1 shows
IEEE 802.11 standards OSI reference model. Here MAC exists in Data Link Layer (DLL) i.e
Open System Interconnection (OSI) layer 2.

Figure 2.1 - IEEE 802.11 standards mapped to the OSI reference model.

MAC is in between PHY layer and Logical Link Control (LLC). In 1999, IEEE introduced
two enhanced PHY layer specifications 802.11b [5] and 802.11a [6] with data transmission
rates of up to 11 and 54 Mbps, respectively.802.11b and 802.11a are based on Direct
Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) with 2.4 GHz band and 5 GHz frequency band respectively. Architecture, services,
authentication and privacy of IEEE 802.11 are discussed in the next section below.

2.1.1 Architecture of IEEE 802.11

The complete IEEE 802.11 architecture is shown in figure 2.2. The Basic Service Set (BSS) is
the basic building block of an IEEE 802.11 LAN and this consists of devices referred to as
Stations (STA). Basically, the set of STAs, which can talk to each other can form a BSS.
Multiple BSSs are interconnected through an architectural component, called Distribution

15
System (DS), to form an Extended Service Set (ESS). An access point (AP) is a STA that
provides access to DS by providing DS services, which mention above. If the LAN just
consists of single BSS, then that is called Independent BSS (IBSS). This IBSS is often
referred as adhoc network for it does not require any pre-planning. Figure 2.3 shows the BSS
in adhoc mode.

Figure: 2.2, Basic Service Set (BSS) with Access

Point (AP) in Distributed System (DS)

Figure: 2.3, Basic Service Set (BSS) without Access

Point (AP) in adhoc mode 16
IEEE 802.11 specifies the services that are to be provided by STAs and DS. It does not
specify how DS is to be implemented; it can be either distributed or central. A service
provided by a station is called Station Service (SS) and a service by a DS is called Distributed
System Service (DSS).

2.1.2 IEEE 802.11 Services

There are following four services which are provided by station:

Authentication: The authentication of devices is important to prevent access by unknown

devices. This simulates the physical security provided by the wired network. This service is
used by all stations to establish their identity to stations with which they will communicate.
The standard supports several authentication processes but does not mandate any of them.

De authentication: This is invoked when an existing authentication is to be removed. Just do

opposite function of authentication.

Privacy: The standard specifies optional Wired Equivalence Privacy (WEP), which provides
a security level equivalent to a wired LAN.

MSDU Delivery: This is for the delivery of MAC service data unit.

Distribution system services include the following five services:

Distribution: This is the primary service invoked by a STA for all messages when operating
an ESS. The onus of moving a message generated by a STA in a BSS to another STA in a
different (or same) BSS is performed by this service call.

Integration: This service is used for the transmission of messages from IEEE 802.11 STA to a
non-IEEE 802.11 network. The STA which connects non-IEEE 802.11 networks to ESS is
called portal.

Association: A STA uses this service to associate itself with an AP with out which it can not
send any messages on that ESS. Each STA can associate with no more than one AP.

Disassociation: This service is used when an existing association needs to be terminated.

Reassociation: This service is used by the mobile STAs when they move from one BSS to
another and want to change their APs

17
2.1.3 Authentication and Privacy

Authentication

Because wireless LANs has limited physical security to prevent unauthorized access, 802.11
define authentication services to control access to the WLAN. The goal of authentication
service is to provide access control equal to a wired LAN.
The authentication service provides a mechanism for one station to identify another station.
Without this proof of identity, the station is not allowed to use the WLAN for data delivery.
All 802.11 stations, whether they are part of an independent BSS or ESS network, must use
the authentication service prior to communicating with another station.

IEEE 802.11 defines two types of authentication services.

Open system authentication: This is the default authentication method, which is a very simple,
two-step process. First the station wanting to authenticate with another station sends an
authentication management frame containing the sending station’s identity. The receiving
station then sends back a frame alerting whether it recognizes the identity of the
authenticating station.

Shared key authentication: This type of authentication assumes that each station has received
a secret shared key through a secure channel independent of the 802.11 network. Stations
authenticate through shared knowledge of the secret key. Use of shared key authentication
requires implementation of encryption via the Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP algorithm.

De-authentication
The de-authentication service is used to eliminate a previously authorized user from any
further use of the network. Once a station is de-authenticated, that station is no longer able to
access the WLAN without performing the authentication function again.

De-authentication is a notification and cannot be refused. For example, when a station wishes
to be removed from a BSS, it can send a de-authentication management frame to the
associated access point to notify the access point of the removal from the network. An access
point could also de-authenticate a station by sending a de-authentication frame to the station.

Privacy
The privacy service of IEEE 802.11 is designed to provide an equivalent level of protection
for data on the WLAN as that provided by a wired network with restricted physical access.
This service protects that data only as it traverses the wireless medium. It is not designed to
provide complete protection of data between applications running over a mixed network.

With a wireless network, all stations and other devices can "hear" data traffic tacking place
within range on the network, seriously impacting the security level of a wireless link. IEEE
802.11 counters this problem by offering a privacy service option that raises the security of
the 802.11 networks to that of a wired network. The privacy service, applying to all data
frames and some authentication management frames, is an encryption algorithm based on the
802.11 Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) algorithms.

18
Data Delivery
Data delivery service is similar to that provided by all other IEEE 802 LANs. The data
delivery service provides reliable delivery of data frames from the MAC in one station to the
MAC in one or more other stations, with minimal duplication and reordering of frames.

2.2 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)

The 802.11 MAC layer provides functionality to allow reliable data delivery for the upper
layers over the wireless PHY media. The data delivery itself is based on an asynchronous,
best-effort, connectionless delivery of MAC layer data. There is no guarantee that the frames
will be delivered successfully. Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) is the basic access
mechanism of 802.11, which is based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA). CSMA
operates as like listen-before-talk, i.e, before transmitting a frame to wireless media STA must
sense the media. If the media is free at least for short time called DCF Inter Frame Space
(DIFS) time period then the STA can access the media and can transmits data. During this
time period of transmission other STAs must wait until medium becomes idle again at least
for DIFS time period. Figure 2.4 illustrate the simple flowchart of Media Access Control
(MAC) logic.

Figure 2.4 IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) Logic

19
As the destination STA successfully receives a frame then it acknowledges the sender by
sending back immediate an ACK frame after Short Inter Frame Space (SIFS) time duration.
Figure 2.5 shows the basic access mechanism of 802.11

Figure 2.5 Basic access mechanism of IEEE 802.11

There are three Inter Frame Space (IFS) defined in IEEE 802.11 to control the access to the
wireless media. Two inter frame spaces, DIFS and SIFS we have seen in above figure 2.4.
Another inter frame space called PCF Inter Frame Space (PIFS) is used by AP in PCF.SIFS is
the shortest Inter Frame Space among of the three. Figure 2.6 illustrate the relationship of
three Inter Frame Space (IFS).

Figure 2.6 Relationship among three Inter Frame Space (IFS)

SIFS is the inter frame space (IFS) between the data frame from sender and ACK frame from
receiver. As we mention above SIFS is smaller than DIFS duration, so no data frame from
other stations will access the medium before ACK frame.

The second shortest IFS is PIFS which is used by AP in Point Coordination Function (PCF) as
we mention earlier. PCF is optional polling based access mechanism of IEEE 802.11 that’s
poll stations individually which is centrally controlled. In PCF, PC/AP is given priority over
ordinary stations such that PIFS is lower duration than DIFS time period.

The values of IFS are depending on the underlying Physical layer (PHY) condition and it is
the multiple of slots time. Slots time is derived from propagation delay, transmitter delay, and
other physical dependent parameters [12]. PIFS is equal to SIFS plus one slot time and DIFS

20
is equal to PIFS plus one slot time. In mathematically, SIFS<PIFS<DIFS. If SIFS is equal to 7
slots time, then PFIS is equal to (7+1)=8 slots time and DIFS is equal to (8+1)=9 slots time.

Carrier sensing is done by the stations, which want to communicate with the other station. The
IEEE 802.11 MAC specifies both physical and virtual carrier sensing as a means to avoid
collisions. While physical carrier sensing is done through signal measurement, virtual carrier
sensing is done using the Network Allocation Vector (NAV). In the next section 2.2.2 we will
discuss about NAV with Request To Send (RTS)/Clear To Send (CTS) schemes.

2.2.1 Collision Avoidance and Back off procedure

The 802.11 standard includes a basic Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). The DCF is
the fundamental access method used to support asynchronous data transfer on the best effort
basis. As specified in standards, the DCF must be supported by all the stations in a basic
service set (BSS). The DCF is based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision
Avoidance CSMA/CA.

There are two techniques used for packet transmitting in DCF. The default one is a two-way
handshaking mechanism, also called basic access method. The destination station transmits a
positive acknowledgement (ACK) message signal for a successful packet transmission. The
other optional mechanism is a four-way handshaking access method, which uses the request-
to-send/clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) technique to reserve the channel before data transmission,
which is discussed in next section 2.2.2.

The fundamental access method of 802.11 is Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision
Avoidance or CSMA/CA. CSMA/CA works by a "listen before talk scheme". This means that
a station wants to transmit must first sense the radio channel to determine if the channel is
busy or not. If the medium is not busy, the transmission may proceed.
The CSMA/CA protocol avoids collisions among stations sharing the medium by utilizing a
random back off time if the station’s physical or logical sensing mechanism indicates a busy
medium. The period of time immediately following a busy medium is the highest probability
of collisions occurring, especially under high utilization.
The CSMA/CA scheme implements a minimum time gap between frames from a given user.
Once a frame has been sent from a given transmitting station, that station must wait until the
time gap is up to try to transmit again. Once the time has passed, the station selects a random
amount of time (the back off interval) to wait before "listening" again to verify a clear channel
on which to transmit. If the channel is still busy, another back off interval is selected that is
less than the first. This process is repeated until the waiting time approaches zero and the
station is allowed to transmit. This type of multiple accesses ensures judicious channel sharing
while avoiding collisions.

21
 2.2.2 RTS/CTS mechanism

DCF also provides an optional access method that introduces an additional operation on top of
the basic access method before a packet transmission is taken place. When the back-off timer
reaches zero, instead of transmitting the packet, the user first transmits an RTS frame to
request for a transmission right. Upon receiving the RTS frame, the receiver replies with a
CTS frame after a SIFS period. Once the RTS/CTS is exchanged successfully, the user
transmits a data packet. Figure 2.7 illustrates the RTS/CTS packet transmission method.The
frames RTS and CTS carry the information of the length of the packet to be transmitted.
Therefore, all the other users are capable of updating the NAVs based on the RTS from the
source user and the CTS from the destination user. This helps to solve the hidden terminal
problems. If a user can detect the transmission of at least one RTS or CTS frame, it can avoid
collision even to sense the channel busy. If a collision occurs with two RTS frames far less
bandwidth is wasted compared a collision with larger data frames. Collisions between RTS
packets can still occur in CSMA/CA. These are minimized with a randomized exponential
back-off strategy similar to that used in regular CSMA.
DIFS

SIFS
NAV (RTS)
other
NAV (CTS)

RTS SIFS SIFS SIFS

sender payload packet

CTS ACK
receiver
Figure 2.7 RTS/CTS mechanism for IEEE 802.11

22
 2.2.3 MAC frame

The 802.11 MAC provides a controlled access method to the shared wireless media called
Carrier-Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA). CSMA/CA is similar
to the collision detection access method deployed by 802.3 Ethernet LANs (ELAN). Here we
will see how the MAC frame format looks like. Figure 2.8 shows the details of MAC frame
format. The fields of this frame are as follows:

2 2 6 6 6
2 6 4
Frame Duration/ Address1 Adderss2 Address3 Sequence Address4 Frame CRC
Control ID Control body
MAC Header

2 2 4 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1
Protocol Type Subtype To From More Retry Pwr More WEP Order
Version DS DS Frag mgt Data
B0 B15

Figure 2.8 IEEE 802.11 MAC frame Format

The frame control field contains total 16 bits, which is shown in above figure. Protocol
version, 2 bits indicate its version. Currently it is zero. The idea behind is that major protocol
change will change its version number. Type field (2 bits, B3B2) 00 indicate management
frame, 01 indicate control frame, 10 indicate data frame, and 11 is reserved for future.
Subtype field indicates more specifically of different types of field. To DS and from DS fields
combine with address fields makes valid address format that indicate different functions.
Below table 2.1 shows the different valid address format. In ad-hoc mode, To DS and From
DS fields are zeros i.e To DS and From DS fields are only valid for infrastructure based
operations. More frag field indicates that the large frame fragmented into more small frames
so that lost rate of ACKs keeps low. Retry field indicate that this frame is re-transmission due
to no ACK frame received by sender. Power management frame indicates that the station
weather it is in power mode or not.

23
Functions To DS From DS Address1 Address2 Address3 Address4

Ad-Hoc 0 0 DA SA BSSID -

From AP 0 1 DA BSSID SA -

To AP 1 0 BSSID SA DA -

Within DS 1 1 RA TA DA SA

Table: 2.1 Valid MAC Address format.

More data means more frames is coming and keep power on (to avoid sleep mode of stations).
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) set to 1 if the optional wired equivalent protocol is
implemented. WEP is used in the exchange of encryption keys for secure data exchange.[7]
Order means received frame must be processed in order at the receiving end.

Duration or Connection ID field indicates the time of a successful transmission of MAC

frame. This is actually the channel allocated time for successful MAC frame transmission in
microseconds. Connection ID is used as an identifier in some control frame for association or
connection. The duration value is also used for the Network Allocation Vector (NAV)
calculation.
There are four address fields in MAC frame. Each address field is six (6) byte in length.
Table 2.1 illustrates the valid address format which shows that the combination of four
addresses field with frame control address field. Those combinations indicate the different
functions.
Two byte sequence control field consists of fragment number and sequence number. It is used
to represent the order of different fragments belonging to the same frame and to recognize
packet duplications.

Data field contain original data which to be transmitted from sender to receiver. It is variable
in between zero to 9196 byte in length.

Another field is 32 bits Cyclic Redundancy Code (CRC) is type of hash function which is
used to produce a small, fixed-size checksum of a larger block of data.

2.3 Point Coordination Function (PCF)

The point coordination function (PCF) is a centralized MAC algorithm used to provide
contention-free service. Contention-free services are polling based access mechanism usable
for infrastructure-based network. The lower sub layer of the MAC layer is the Distributed
Coordination Function (DFC) to provide access to all traffic. PCF is built on top of DCF and
exploits features of DCF to assure access for delay sensitive data traffic. PCF is an optional

24
access method provided by the 802.11 standard. With PCF, a point coordinator within the
access point controls all stations synchronously. Figue.2.9 shows the relationship between
PCF and DCF within the MAC protocol.

Figure 2.9, PCF and DCF relationship within MAC protocol.

Within a time period called the contention free period all stations are polled one by one. For
example, the point coordinator may first poll station A, and during a specific period of time
station A can transmit data frames (and no other station can send anything). The point
coordinator will then poll the next station and continue down the polling list, while listing
each station to have a chance to send data. So there is no chance to collide data each other
even no need extra RTS/CTS handshaking mechanism.

2.3.1 Access Procedure

The optional PCF is logically sits on the top of the DCF to provide an access of delay
sensitive data and DCF provide media access for the normal data. The Contention Free Period
(CFP) repetition interval is used to determine the frequency at which the PCF occurs. A
Station (STA) has an option weather it is respond to a Contention-Free Poll (CF-Poll) or not
.The CF-Poll is provided by an Access Point (AP). A CF-Pollable STA is selected by an
active Point Coordinator (PC) according to its nature of frame i.e. whether it is delay sensitive
data frame or normal data frame. RTS/CTS are not used by the CF-Pollable STAs and the PC
in the CFP. When polled by the PC, a CF-Pollable STA may transmit only one MAC
Protocols Data Unit (MPDU), which can be not only to the PC but also to any destination and
gets the acknowledgement of the frame using “piggyback”. If the data frame is not
acknowledged, the CF-Pollable STA will wait for the next poll again to retransmit the frame
or it decides to retransmit during the contention period. Figure 2.10 shows the transmission
from PC to STA and vice versa.

25
 Figure 2.10 illustrates the transmission of frames between the PC and a station, and vice
versa.
If the medium is free or idle more than at least one PIFS then the AP transmits the beacon
frame, which initiates the CFP repetition interval. There is an interval for at least one SIFS
period between beacon frame and the transmit one of the following: a data frame, a CF-Poll
frame, a Data + CF-Poll frame, or a CF-End frame. The above figure 2.10 shows the
following steps of transmitting at CFP. If there is no traffic buffered and no polls to send at
the PC, a CF-End frame shall be transmitted immediately after the initial beacon.
All stations within the BSS update their NAV to the maximum length of the CFP at the
beginning of each CFP repetition interval. A station can get only one chance to transmit data
frame to PC during the CFP. If the PC receives a Data + CF-Ack frame from a station, the PC
can send a Data + CF-Poll + CF-ACK frame to a different station, where the CF-ACK portion
of the frame is used to acknowledge receipt of the previous data frame.
The ability to combine polling and acknowledgement frames with data frames, transmitted
between stations and the PC, has been designed to improve the efficiency.[18]. After waits a
PIFS interval if PC fails to get ACK frame for the transmitting frame then PC adding the next
station as polling lists.

2.4 Physical Layer

The 802.11 physical layer (PHY) is the interface between the MAC and the wireless media
where frames are transmitted and received. The PHY layer is involved with three functions.
First, the PHY builds an interface to exchange frames with the upper MAC layer for
transmission and reception of data. Secondly, the PHY uses carrier frequency and spread
spectrum modulation technique to transmit data frames over the media. Thirdly, the PHY
provides a carrier sense indication back to the MAC to verify activity on the media.
IEEE 802.11 provides three different types of modulation technique in PHY layer definitions.

Below we discuss each of them. The three different spread spectrum techniques are,

26
 1. Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum

2. Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum

3. Infrared

Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS)

The principle of Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum is to spread a signal on a larger frequency
band by multiplexing it with a signature or code to minimize localized interference and
background noise. To spread the signal, each bit is modulated by a code. In the receiver, the
original signal is recovered by receiving the whole spread channel and demodulating with the
same code used by the transmitter. There is not necessary to synchronization between
transmitter and receiver. Table 2.2, illustrates the parameter sets of DSSS. The 802.11 Direct
Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) PHY also uses the 2.4 GHz radio frequency band.

Data rate Chipping code Modulation Symbol rate Bits / Symbol

length
1 Mbps 11 (Barker DBPSK 1 Msps 1
sequence)
2 Mbps 11 (Barker DQPSK 1 Msps 2
sequence)
5.5 Mbps 8 CCK DBPSK 11.375 Msps 4

11 Mbps 8 CCK DQPSK 1.375 Msps 8

Table 2.2 shows the parameter sets of DSSS

27
Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS)

FHSS system makes use of a multiple channels, with the signal hopping from one channel to
another based on a pseudo noise sequence. In the case of the IEEE 802.11 scheme, 1MHz
channels are used. The number of channels available ranges from23 in Japan to 70 in the
United States.

Data rate Modulation Symbol rate Bits / Symbol

1 Mbps Two-level GFSK 1Msps 1

2 Mbps Four-level GFSK 1Msps 2

Table 2.3 shows the parameter sets of FHSS

The details of the hopping scheme are adjustable. For example the minimum hop rate for the
United States is 2.5 hops per second. The minimum hop distance in frequency is 6 MHz in
North America and most of Europe and 5 MHz in Japan. For modulation the FHSS scheme
uses two-level Gaussian FSK for the 1-Mbps system. The bits zero and one are encoded as
deviations from the current carrier frequency. For 2 Mbps, a four-level GFSK scheme is used,
in which four different deviations from the center frequency define the four 2-bit
combinations

Infrared (IR)

The IEEE 802.11 infrared scheme is omni directional rather than point to point. A range of up
to 20 m is possible. The modulation scheme for the 1Mbps data rate is known as16-PPM
(pulse position modulation).

Data rate Modulation Symbol rate Bits / Symbol

1 Mbps 16-PPM 4 Msps 0.25
2 Mbps 4-PPM 4 Msps 0.5

Table 2.4 shows the parameter sets of IR

In this scheme each group of 4 data bits is mapped into one of the 16-PPM symbols, each
symbol is string of 16 bits. Each 16bit string consists of fifteen 0s and one binary 1. For the 2-
Mbps data rate each group of 2 data bits is mapped into one of four 4-bit sequences. Each
sequence consists of three 0s and one binary 1. The actual transmission uses an intensity
modulation scheme, in which the presence of a signal corresponds to a binary 1 and the
absence of a signal corresponds to binary 0.

PHY Frame format

In this section, we will briefly discuss about physical layer frame format which is operate by
Physical Layer Convergence Protocol (PLCP). Figure 2.11 illustrates the physical layer frame

28
format. There are two fields in PLCP Protocol Data Unit (PPDU).One is PLCP preamble
which is 144 bits another is PLCP header which is 48 bits.

Figure 2.11 Shows the PHY layer frame format.

In PLCP preamble, Synchronization (Sync) field consists of 128 bits. It is filled in with
predefined numbers and allows receiver to synchronize to the transmission. Another 16 bits,
Start Frame Delimiter (SFD) field is used to mark the start of every frame. Combine of those
above two fields are PLCP preamble (144 bits). In PLCP header, 8 bits Signal or Data rate
(DR) field indicates how fast the data will be transmitted. The only two possible values for the
June 1997 version of 802.11 are 00001010 for 1 Mbps DSSS and 00010100 for 2 Mbps
DSSS. The next 8 bits Service field is reserved for future use. The next 16 bits Length field
indicates the length of the ensuing MAC PDU. Last CRC field is used for error detecting
which is 16 bits.The preamble and the PLCP header are transmitted at 1Mbps regardless of
the current data transmission speed. But the data rate is not same for MPDU .The MPDU data
rate is sent to the receiver at the rate specified in the services field. In the next section, some
standards of IEEE 802.11 are discussed.

IEEE 802.11a

The IEEE 8020.11a specification, the 5-GHz band is used rather than the 2.4-GHz band.
IEEE 802.11a specifications use a high effective multi-carrier modulation called Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). Channels are orthogonal with each others so that
interference and noise should be eliminated. OFDM uses multiple carrier signals at different
frequencies sending some of the bits on each channel. Table 2.5 shows some parameter sets of
IEEE 802.11a using OFDM multi-carrier modulation.

Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)

October 1999 5 GHz 25 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s ~30 meters (~98 ft)

Table 2.5 shows the parameter sets of IEEE 802.11a

29
 In the case of OFDM all of the sub-channels are treated as a single data source. The possible
data rates for IEEE 802.11a are 6,9,12,18,24,36,48 and 54 Mbps. The system uses up to 52
sub-carriers that are modulated using BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM, or 64-QAM, depending on the
rate is required. Sub-carrier frequency spacing is 0.3125 MHz.

IEEE 802.11b

The 802.11b amendment to the original standard was ratified in 1999 and its maximum raw
data rate is 11 Mbit/s. IEEE 802.11b operates with 2.4GHz frequency band and uses the same
CSMA/CA media access method defined in the original standard. In practice the maximum
throughput of IEEE 802.11b is about 5.9 Mbps using Transport Control Protocol (TCP) and
7.1 Mbps using User Datagram Protocol (UDP) due to the CSMA/CA protocol overhead. The
IEEE 802.11b products came on the market very rapidly, since 802.11b is a direct extension
of the DSSS (Direct-sequence spread spectrum) modulation technique, we have already
discussed this Spread Spectrum technique on above section. Table 2.6 illustrates the
parameter sets of IEEE 802.11b.

Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)

October 1999 2.4 GHz 6.5 Mbit/s 11 Mbit/s ~30 meters (~98 ft)

Table 2.6 shows the parameter sets of IEEE 802.11b

Technically, the 802.11b standard uses Complementary Code Keying (CCK) as its
modulation technique rather than OFDM or Spread Spectrum, which is a variation on Code
Division Multiple Access (CDMA). It is grate advantage of IEEE 802.11b that the chipsets
and products were easily upgraded to support its enhancements. The dramatic increase in
throughput of 802.11b compared to the original standard along with substantial price
reductions led to the rapid acceptance of 802.11b as the definitive wireless LAN technology.

IEEE 802.11g

The IEEE 802.11g , 3rd standard was ratified in June 2003. IEEE 802.11g operates with 2.4
GHz band like 802.11b but operates at a maximum raw data rate of 54 Mbit/s like 802.11a.
Due to protocols overhead, in practices maximum throughput of 802.11g is 27.9 Mbps.
Another grate advantage of 802.11g is that the hardware is compatible with 802.11b
hardware. Table shows some parameter sets of IEEE 802.11g.

Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)

June 2003 2.4 GHz 24 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s ~30 meters (~98 ft)

Table 2.7 shows the parameter sets of IEEE 802.11g

30
The modulation scheme used in 802.11g is orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM) for the data rates of 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 54 Mbit/s, and reverts to (like the
802.11b standard) CCK for 5.5 and 11 Mbit/s and DBPSK/DQPSK+DSSS for 1 and 2 Mbit/s.

IEEE 802.11n

The standard IEEE 802.11n is currently in under development. For multimedia

communication the throughputs of this current standard try to enhance up to 540 Mbps. Table
2.8 shows the some parameter sets of IEEE 802.11n.

Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)

Unfinished 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz 200 Mbit/s 540 Mbit/s ~50 meters (~165 ft)

Table 2.8 shows the parameter sets of IEEE 802.11n

2.5 Summary
IEEE released 802.11 Wireless LAN standard in 1997 though began its journey early 1987.
The first standard, IEEE 802.11b supported maximum data rate of 11 Mbps and next another
improved standard IEEE 802.11a supported maximum data rate 54 Mbps. MAC is the lower
part of OSI reference model is referred to as DLL. So the MAC layer makes an interface with
the LLC and Physical (PHY) layer. PHY layer transmit data from transmitter to receiver
which operate at ISM frequency band based on some modulation technique like spread
spectrum (DSSS and FHSS), OFDM etc. MAC operates based on two types of access
mechanism.
Optional Point Coordination Function (PCF) is based on contention free access mechanism
for delay sensitive data traffic. Centralized control polling based mechanism poll each stations
at one time within contention period interval and no other pollable stations can get access the
medium. So it is not possible collision among pollable stations and that is why RTS/CTS are
not used in CFP. A CF-Pollable STA is selected by an active Point Coordinator (PC)
according to its nature of frame i.e. whether it is delay sensitive data frame or normal data
frame.

31
DCF is basic access mechanism based on CSMA/CA.Before transmitting a frame, the station
senses the medium, and if the medium is found idle at least for DIFS (DCF Inter-Frame
Space) time period, the station starts transmission. Otherwise, if the medium is found busy
during the DIFS period, the station defers access and chooses a random backoff value that
specifies the additional time it has to wait after the medium becomes idle again. As the
medium becomes idle for the DIFS time period again, the station starts decrementing its
backoff time. If medium becomes busy during this backoff procedure, the station pauses the
backoff timer, and resumes it as the medium becomes idle for the DIFS period again. The
station is allowed to transmit as the backoff timer reaches to zero. The additional random
backoff time helps avoiding collision, which is defined as the situation when two or more
stations transmit at the same time and result in collision. As the destination station receives
the frame, it acknowledges by sending back an ACK frame after SIFS (Short Inter-Frame
Space) time period. SIFS, like DIFS, is one of the three inter-frame spaces (IFS) defined to
control the medium access.An additional mechanism RTS/CTS is defined that allows the
sender and receiver to handshake by exchanging RTS (Request To Send) and CTS (Clear To
Send) frames prior to transmitting the data frame for overcome so called hidden node
problem. There are many working groups for WLAN standard working on and already many
standards in market available now. Some of the working groups work on the throughput issue
of IEEE 802.11. The IEEE 02.11n standard is in under research and tries to enhance the
throughput up to 554 Mbps.

32
Chapter 3

Overhead Analysis and Throughput Enhancement Schemes

3.1 Introduction

There are lot of parameters involve in MAC design. Some of these parameters are given here
according to priority order. Throughput, Delay, Bandwidth efficiency, Packet order
preservation, Handoff/roaming between different services area are some of them. This thesis
deals with mainly throughput and as well as delay parameter. The efficiency of medium
access control (MAC) mechanism is based upon on designing goal. The IEEE 802.11 medium
access control (MAC) employs mandatory contention-based channel access function called
distributed coordination function (DCF), and an optional centrally controlled channel access
function called point coordination function (PCF) [2]. The DCF method employ binary
exponential back off using carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance. Another
PCF introduce centrally controlled polling based access mechanism. These two methods are
already described in the previous chapter. In this chapter we will discuss about overhead and
we will try to make a relationship between the overhead and throughput. In the next section
we will go through the performance analysis of some proposed throughput enhancement
schemes.

3.2 Overhead Analysis

There are lot of control frames; management frames as well as data frames are involved
during the transmission. All types of frames contain a specific amount of octets as header. A
Frame Check Sequence (FCS) is extra checksum, which is added to all frames of
communication protocols for error detection and correction. Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)
is used mainly to do so. In Physical (PHY) layer also contain some overhead such as Physical
Layer Convergence Protocol (PLCP) preamble and PLCP header. Inter Frame Space (IFS) is
space between two consecutive frames that can help to separate these frames. In DCF function
all data frames are separated by DIFS and acknowledgement frames are separated by SIFS.
PIFS is used in PCF function, which we mention earlier. Random back off mechanism is used
in DCF mode for avoid collision between frames. All parameters (i.e. MAC header, FCS,
PHY preamble, PHY header, Inter-frame space (IFS), Back off time, ACK frame),which are
mentioned above called overhead of IEEE 802.11 standard. All of these overheads are added
to each frame during the transmission as a fixed manner. These overhead are the major
fundamental issue for throughput enhancement. So there is need to analysis the overhead of
MAC layer to provide good throughput. Theoretically, it is possible to increase the expected
throughput efficiency is about 15% if only we consider header. Figure 3.1 shows the MAC
header including FCS field is 28 octets and figure 3.2 shows the ACK frame is 14 octets as
overhead.

33
Figure 3.1 MAC frame format within the DS. i.e Not valid for AP to AP transmission.

Figure 3.2 MAC Ack frame format.

During the transmission, a PLCP preamble and a PLCP header are added to an MPDU to
create a PPDU. The PPDU format of the IEEE 802.11a PHY is shown in Figure 3.3, which
includes PLCP preamble, PLCP header, MPDU, tail bits, and pad bits. The PLCP preamble
field, with the time duration of tPLCPPreamble, is composed of 10 repetitions of a short
training sequence (0.8µs).

Figure 3.3 PPDU frame format of IEEE 802.11a OFDM PHY.

The PLCP header, except the 16 bits SERVICE field, with the duration of tPLCP_SIG,
constitutes a single OFDM symbol. The 6 tail bits are used for convolution codec and the pad
bits are used to make the resulting bit string into a multiple of OFDM symbols. Each OFDM
symbol interval is 4µs and denoted by tSymbol. The 16-bits SERVICE field of the PLCP
header and the MPDU (along with six tail bits and pad bits), represented by DATA, are
transmitted at the data rate specified in the RATE field. In the table 3.1, we show the PHY
OFDM characteristic.

34
 Characteristics Value Comments
tSlotTime 9 µs Slot time
tSIFS 16 µs SIFS time
tDIFS 34 µs DIFS=SIFS+2 ×slot
CWmin 15 Minimum contention window size
CWmax 1023 Maximum contention window size
tPLCPPreamble 16 µs PLCP preamble duration
tPLCP_SIG 4 µs PLCP SIGNAL field duration
tSymbol 4 µs OFDM symbol interval

Table 3.1 PHY OFDM IEEE 802.11a characteristics.

For this analysis we will consider the following assumptions for simplicity a) only one active
sender and only one active receiver operate at DCF mode within BSS. b) The channel is error-
free or idea channel. c) In the transmitter end frames always must have wait for transmission.
d) Each frame is in equal of size.
Note that data frames can be transmitted at any data rate but control frames including ACK
frame must be operated at predefined BSS rate set so that all stations within the same network
understood the same control rate. For example, if the basic rate set is defined by the BSS is
{12Mbps, 24Mbps, and 36Mbps} and data rate is 28 Mbps then the ACK frame transfer rate
will be 24 Mbps. Now for IEEE 802.11a parameter set, the transmission time of data frame or
MAC Protocol Data Unit (MPDU) with L byte payload

 28 + (16 + 6) / 8 + L 
Tdata = tPLCPpreable + tPLCP _ SIG +   * tSymbol
 BsP(m) 

 30.75 + L 
Tdata = tPLCPpreamble + tPLCP _ SIG +   * tSymbol ………………………….(1)
 BpS (m) 

and

14 + (16 + 8) / 8 
T ACK = tPLCPpreamble + tPLCP _ SIG +   * tSymbol
 BpS (n) 

 16.75 
T ACK = tPLCPpreamble + tPLCP _ SIG +   * tSymbol ……………………………..(2)
 BpS (n) 

where BpS(m) and BpS(n) represent byte per symbol rate of data frame and ACK frame
respectively. So the number of bytes in a symbol

BpS (m) = m/2 …………………………………………………… (3)

m is the PHY data rate in Mbps.

35
If the data frames are transmitted at m Mbps in PHY and ACK frame are transmitted at n
Mbps then the throughput performance of the system can be calculated as follows:

8* L
Tthroughput (m, n) = ……………………(4)
tDIFS + tTBackoff (i ) + Tdata + tSIFS + TACK

Here (i-1)th retransmission attempt of random backoff time is defined as follows:

tTBackoff (i ) =
[
min 2 i −1.(CW min + 1) − 1, CW max ]
* tSlotTime ……………………………(5)
2

Random back off delay is the unit of slot time and this random integer is picked up from a
uniform distribution of the interval [0,CW] where CW is the current contention window size.
The initial contention window size is CWmin and maximum contention window size is
CWmax. But in this case CW is always in CWmin. Because there is only one active sender
and only one active receiver station is in BSS. The below figure 3.4 shows the analysis result
of above analysis at 32Mbps data rate and ACK frame transmission rate is 24Mbps. We
observe that the throughput performance is extremely poor when the payload size is small at
constant data rate. For example, using 100 byte payload only achieves about 3Mpbs
throughput over 54Mbps link. But the throughput performance is good almost 22Mbps at
payload size 1500 byte.

Throughput Vs Payload
25
32Mbps

20

15
Throughput

10

0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Payload in Bytes

Figure: 3.4 show Throughput performance vs. payload size at 32Mbps data rate.

36
In figure 3.5 shows the throughput as a function of payload size at different data rate. In this
figure, throughput increases when the data rate increase at fixed payload size. Suppose at
fixed data payload size 500 Byte the throughput increases from 12Mbps to 17 Mbps when the
data rate increases from 24Mbps to 54Mbps. Again we observe that at higher data rate the
throughput performance is poor than the lower data rate. For example at 1000 byte packet size
the data rate difference between first consecutive two curves is 15Mbps and the throughput
difference between these two consecutive curves is 8Mbps. Again at 1000 byte packet size the
data rate difference between 2nd and 3 rd consecutive two curves is 30 Mbps but the
throughput difference between these two curves is 9Mbps. So it is easy to make a comment
that the throughput wills independent of data rate after certain value which will more clear
from below figure 3.6 and figure 3.7. In figure 3.6, shows the relationship between
throughput and data rate at fixed payload size.

Throughput Vs Payload
40

9Mbps
35
24Mbps
54Mbps
30 108Mbps
216Mbps
25
Throughput

20

15

10

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Payload in Bytes

Figure: 3.5 shows throughput as a function of payload in bytes at different data rate.

In figure 3.6 indicates that at higher data rate throughput are independent upon data rate even
the data rate is infinitely high. We observe that the throughput almost the same for all data
rate after 225Mbps at 200 byte fixed payload size. Another figure 3.7 shows throughput as a
function of data rate at different payload size.

37
 Throughput Vs Data Rate
10

7 L=200 Byte

6
Throughput

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Data Rate in Mbps

Figure 3.6 shows the throughput as a function of data rate at 200 Byte fixed payload size.

Throughput Vs Data Rate

45
100 Byte
40 300 Byte
500 Byte
35 700 Byte
900 Byte
30
Throughput

25

20

15

10

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Data Rate in Mbps

Figure 3.7 shows the throughput as a function of data rate at different payload size.

38
In figure 3.7 shows the five curves for five-payload size. Payload sizes are 100 bytes, 300
bytes, 500 bytes, 700 bytes and 900 bytes. If we compare between the curves of 100 bytes
payload and 900 bytes payload then we see that the throughput of the curve of 100 bytes
payload is independent with data rate above 300 Mbps where as the throughput of the curve of
900 bytes payload is independent with data rate 650 Mbps. In case of small payload,
throughput is really suffering or almost independent from the data rate.

3.3 Throughput Enhancement Schemes

There are lot of existing throughput enhancement schemes. Some of them are PHY layer
based and some of them are MAC layer based. PHY layer enhancement only deals with data
rate already we mention previously. Some higher data rate schemes of IEEE 802.11 has
proposed, such as Bit Loading (BL) approach [11], the double clock rate approach [19], the
double sub carrier number approach [19], the 4096-QAMOFDM approach [19] and the
OFDM/SDM, Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) system approach [19] etc. But
already we observed from above section that data rate is not the main parameter to achieve
maximum throughput. Recently new Task Group (TG), called TGn, was established within
the IEEE 802.11 standardization Working Group (WG) with the goal of developing a Higher
Throughput extension of the current WLAN standard. The main goal of this group is to
achieve the throughput performance of over 100 Mbps, which is approximately 4 times higher
than current IEEE 802.11a and IEEE 802.11g WLANs.[4] So working group is perusing
IEEE 802.11n for higher throughput instead of higher data rate at MAC and PHY
enhancement. In this chapter, we shall discuss some potential proposed schemes for
throughput enhancement of IEEE 802.11 especially we focused on overhead reduction
method in the next section. Here we introduce and propose following efficient MAC strategies

Direct Link Protocol (DLP): DLP was proposed in IEEE 802.11e [10]. In the legacy standard,
if SATs are operating in infrastructure mode, all stations communicate each other’s via AP.
When the communication is only between two stations, which are belongs to the same BSS
then channel resources are wasted. In this case in order to improve efficiency, a direct link
between peer stations is allowed in 802.11e. DLP creates an active direct link between two
stations after exchanging all necessary information like transmission rate sets, security
elements between them.

Block Acknowledgement Protocol (BAP): BAP was proposed in IEEE 802.11e [10]. It is also
called Burst Transmission and Acknowledgment (BTA) [3], Contention-Free Burst (CFB)
[14], Group Transmission and Acknowledgements (GTA) [15], Delayed Group
Acknowledgement (DGA) and etc. The key idea is that not positive acknowledgement for
each transmitted frames from receiver rather than first transmitted all frames to receiver then
acknowledge them all by single frame. We will discuss this BTA mechanism in below section
in detail.

Aggregation [4]: There is lot of small frames transmits on Internet. Some times the MAC and
PHY overhead much bigger than the original payload size. In this case, multiple small frames
are aggregated with each others and then transmit. Remember that the aggregated frame size
is not bigger than the threshold of the channel quality. Frames can be concatenated if they are
available, and have the same source and destination addresses. In below section we discuss it
in detail.

39
Without Acknowledgement: Where frame loss is tolerable but delay is very sensitive. In thus
case Without Acknowledgement schemes is applicable. For some applications such as frames
with audio UDP packets as payload, delay is much more important, whereas some frame-loss
is tolerable. Therefore, we can adopt ‘without acknowledgement’ mechanism to become more
efficient.

Piggyback: The idea of the piggyback mechanism is that a receiver station is allowed to
piggyback a data frame to the sender station once if the receiver station has a frame to send to
the sender. This type of mechanism is very useful for immediate acknowledgement such as
TCP ACK packets. If a TCP receiver successfully received a packet from a TCP sender, then
it is essential to send an acknowledgement packet back to the TCP sender immediately. But if
the acknowledgement packet from TCP receiver can’t access the media channel immediately,
then this delay of TCP acknowledgement causes retransmission from TCP sender again. This
proposed piggyback mechanism can remove this above drawback of retransmission from TCP
sender by piggybacked acknowledgement to the sender immediately. So the overall
performance of the system will be improved greatly.

3.3.1 Frame Aggregation

The frame aggregation method is very simple to enhance the system throughput of IEEE
802.11 wireless networks. The frame aggregation is to aggregate the multiple frames into a
single MAC frame until the aggregated frame is not bigger than the threshold of channel
quality. So the impact of the fixed overheads is relatively reduced and enhances the
performance of throughput, which was analyzed earlier. The task of the frame aggregation can
be made simpler by performing frame aggregation above the MAC SAP, which lies between
MAC and LLC.[4] . So it is not necessary to modify the current MAC and PHY layer. We can
aggregate multiple IP packets as a single supper frame, which is smaller than transmission
threshold above the MAC layer. So MAC layer can deals with this aggregate super frame as
ordinary MSDU. Figure 3.8 shows the original MAC frame and Figure 3.9 shows the MAC
aggregate supper frame.

Figure: 3.8 shows the original MAC frame with LLC layer contains.
In this figure 3.8, the existing MAC frame where the Data field consists only one IP packet,
LLC header, and Sub Network Access Protocol (SNAP) header [17]. When the upper layer
LLC frame forwarded to the MAC layer, a MAC header and 32 bits (4 octets) FCS are added
with this data frame. So there are fixed amount of overhead add with each data frame and the
throughput really suffering if the data packet is relatively small. In figure 3.9, shows that how
the multiple Ether- frames aggregate in a single MAC frame. To do this some new fields add
with original data frame. Those fields are Count fields and Size fields, which mention the
number of aggregation packets and size of the corresponding packets respectively. The

40
aggregated supper frame is send to the MAC as a normal MSDU like above. Here we mention
that all packets have the same source and destination address and the MAC aggregate frame
must be smaller than the threshold∗ value of channel quality.

Figure 3.9 shows the MAC aggregate supper frame as a single MSDU.

Now we will analysis the packet size distribution for all IP packets. Figure 3.10 shows the
packet size distribution which chart is from the measurement taken in the IEEE 802.11
standard meeting room in the mooring of July 22nd, 2003. Form this pie chart, we see 49.40 %
packets are below 64 bytes and 26.45 % are within 64 to 127 bytes. From this it can be seen
that over 70% of packets are small, under 128 bytes. It is about 15 % packets are over 1024
bytes. So small size packets are dominating over big size packets and degrade the
performance of total system throughput.

1024-2024
49.40 % = <64 Byte

512-1023
256-511 26.45 % = 64-127 Byte

128-255 6.27 % = 128-255 Byte

<64
2.38 % = 256-511 Byte

1.17 % = 512-1023 Byte

14.31 % = 1024-2047 Byte

64-127

Figure: 3.10 show the packet

size distribution for all IP
packets.∗

Now we will try to evaluation of the performance of frame aggregation schemes. To evaluate
the performance of the frame aggregation schemes we assume the following assumptions.

∗
The length of concatenation should be smaller than a threshold [9].

41
There is only one active station in the BSS and assume that channel is ideal i.e no collision
will be occurred during the transmission. Due to one active station is present in BSS so we do
not use RTS/CTS mechanism in this simulation. We follow the above packet size distribution
in figure 3.10, which is published at IEEE standard meting. In paper [4], they assume equal
size of packets for the shake of simplicity to simulate this frame aggregation scheme, which is
not so realistic. Here we try to simulate this frame aggregation schemes as above packets size
distribution. Again we assume that packets are always available in sender buffer to be
transmitted.

PHY data rate vs Throughput(Without Frame aggregation)

15

10
Throughput

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Data rate in Mbps

Figure: 3.11 indicates data rate verses throughput graph without frame aggregation schemes.

In figure 3.11 shows the throughput in various PHY data rate when the packets size is selected
as random nature with uniform distribution. Here the slope of first 50 Mbps PHY data rate is
very large but after that the slope decreases fast with data rate. This indicates that throughput
does not depend on very much at higher data rate. In lower data rate it has very good effect on
throughput. In figure 3.12 shows the PHY data rate verses throughput with frame aggregation
schemes. In this figure we noticed that throughput improved much more as compare with
figure 3.11 that is without frame aggregation schemes. Another thing is that throughput
depends all over the range of PHY data rate equally. i.e the slope of this curve are almost
equal over the range of PHY data rate. If we compare these two figures, In 100 Mbps PHY
data rate throughput is about 17 Mbps without frame aggregation schemes where as in frame
aggregation schemes the throughput is about more than 45 Mbps at the same PHY data rate.

42
 PHY data rate vs Throughput(With Frame aggregation)
80

70

60

50 threshold 2304
Throughput

40

30

20

10

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Data rate in Mbps

Figure: 3.12 show the data rate vs throughput with frame aggregation when threshold 2304.

PHY data rate vs Throughput(With Frame aggregation)

70

60

50

threshold 2000
Throughput

40

30

20

10

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Data rate in Mbps

Figure: 3.13 shows data rate verses throughput with frame aggregation when threshold 2000

43
To above simulation of frame aggregation schemes in figure 3.12 we consider the threshold
value of channel quality is 2304 octets. But the throughput could vary for more realistic traffic
situations. The practical maximum packet size is about 1500 octets, which is bounded by the
maximum size of Ethernet frame, while the maximum MSDU of IEEE 802.11 is 2304 octets.
If we consider the threshold values of channel quality are less than 2304 octets, which
decrease the system throughput. In figure 3.13 we simulate data rate verses throughput when
the threshold vale is 2000 octets. To do that we assume no fragmentation will occur i.e no
Ethernet frame is as bigger than 2000 octets.

3.3.2 Burst Transmission and Acknowledgement (BTA)

In IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols, each transmitted frame is acknowledged from receiver before
transmitting again. This is robust and natural but introduce quite amount of overhead which
decrease the system throughput. In order to reduce acknowledgement overhead a new
mechanism is introduced. This is Burst Transmission and Acknowledgement (BTA).

In the BTA mechanism, before any acknowledgement a series of data frames which is called
burst frames to be transmitted. The sender sends a burst acknowledgement request
(BurstAckReq) frame after sending a burst of frames, and the receiver must respond it by
sending the burst acknowledgement (BurstAck) frame. The burst acknowledgement frame is
the information frame of all correctly received data frame. All the frames are separated by an
SIFS period. In figure 3.14 shows the basic mechanism of BTA. Here we mention that typical
BTA sequence is working on contention-free period.

Figure 3.14 shows the basic mechanism of BTA.

Before sending burst frames first the sender have to win a transmission opportunity (TXOP)
using a channel access mechanism. A TXOP is time duration between the starting time of
transmission onto the Wireless Media (WM) and maximum time for the station. The TXOP
mechanism is specified in the IEEE 802.11e MAC enhancements for QoS [10]. Figure 3.15,
figure 3.16 and figure 3.17 shows the BurstAckReq frame, BTA MAC header and BurstAck
frame respectively.

Figure: 3.15 BTA burst acknowledgement request (BurstAckReq) frame.

44
The receiver controls the length of each burst and the amount of burst. In figure 3.16 we see
that the MAC format is a little different from the original MAC data frame. The length of
Sequence Control (SC) field is 2 octets and there are two subfields of SC field. One is
fragment number which is 4 bits another is Sequence Number. Therefore, the maximum
number of fragmented MSDU is 16 from one original MSDU. If the size of the original
MSDU is larger than the fragmentation threshold then this frame fragmentation will occur.
We have already mentioned it in the previous section. Another important field is 32 octets
Ack Bitmap field, where each bit can acknowledge one fragment frame (MPDU). It is very
difficult to say in prior that the MSDU will be fragmented or not.

Figure: 3.16 show the MAC header of BTA frame.

Figure: 3.17 show the burst acknowledgement (BurstAck) frame.

To acknowledge one MSDU, 2 octets in the Ack Bitmap field are needed. So the Ack Bitmap
field can acknowledge up to 32/2=16 MSDU's. The sequence control field defines an MPDU
sequence number equal to (Sequence Number * 16) + Fragment Number. If the BurstAck
indicates that there are missing some of MPDU and not received correctly then the sender will
retry that MPDU. Note that the MPDU’s is within the appropriate retry limit. The receiver
will maintain a burst acknowledgement records and as well as corresponding transmitter
address.

In order to get the maximum throughput, we assume the following assumptions. Firstly, all
MSDU’s are less than or equal to fragmentation threshold so that no fragmentation will occur.
Because more fragmentations will introduce more overhead including frame headers and SIFS
spaces, which decrease the throughput. Secondly, the burst length and the number of bursts,
the higher the throughput is, since the acknowledgement overhead is saved much more when
the number of frames in a burst is larger. Thirdly, the channel is an ideal channel without
errors, and all stations are within radio range. Finally, we assume that the TXOP needs zero
overheads to obtain. Such an assumption potentially increases the maximum throughput a
little bit, makes equation derivations simpler, and avoids the introduction of the whole QoS
scheme and MAC enhancement for IEEE 802.11 [12]. Let the CF-Poll (without data) frame is
a zero length data frame. Now we try to evaluate the throughput of BTA mechanism with
above following assumptions. Let Lr = 22 denote the size of the burst acknowledgement
request (BurstAckReq) in bytes according to figure 3.15, La = 56 denote the size of the burst
acknowledgement (BurstAck) in bytes according to figure 3.17, and Tr denote the time

45
required to transmit the burst acknowledgement request frame, Ta denote the time required to
transmit the burst acknowledgement frame then we have following equation for Maximum
Throughput (MT)

8 Ldata * Nb
MT = ……………………………..(6)
Tpo + Nb * Tdata + Tr + Ta + Tsifs ( Nb + 2 )

and

Minimum Delay (MD)

MD = Tdata + Tsifs ………………………………………………………………….(7)

Where Tpo and Nb denote that the time required transmitting contention free poll (CF-Poll)
and number of bursts respectively.

According to paper [3] for the BTA mechanism, a theoretical throughput upper limit
(TUL_BTA) and a theoretical delay lower limit (DLL_BTA) exist. The TUL_BTA and
DLL_BTA are independent of data rate (even data rate goes infinitely high). TUL_BTA and
DLL_BTA are define as follows

8 Ldata * Nb
TUL _ BTA = ……………………………………(8)
( Nb + 3)(Tp + Tphy ) + Tsifs ( Nb + 2)

and

DLL _ BTA = Tsifs …………………………………………………………………….(9)

For the shake of simplicity we assume that all bursts are equal in length and the data rate and
control rate are equal.

46
Figure 3.18 shows the BTA throughput verses payload when the data rate are different. If we
compare between figure 3.18 and figure 3.5, we see the big improvement of throughput using
BTA mechanism. For example at 500 fixed payload sizes, the throughput of normal access
mechanism and BTA mechanism are 19Mbps and 47Mbps respectively. It is about 55%
throughput gain is possible using BTA mechanism.

BTA Throughput Vs Payload

100

90
9Mbps
80 24Mbps
54Mbps
70
108Mbps
216Mbps
60
Throughput

50

40

30

20

10

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Payload in Bytes

Figure: 3.18 show the Maximum Throughput (MT) verses payload in bytes.

3.4 Summary
The efficiency of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols is based on its design. There are lot of
parameters involved in this design. Throughput is one of them. Overhead is the fundamental
issue in case of MAC throughput. Because the throughput are almost independent of PHY
layer data rate when data rate goes infinitely high. For enhancement of throughput, MAC
overhead must be reduced. There are lot of MAC overhead exist in IEEE 802.11 protocols.
MAC headers, FCS, PHY preamble, PHY headers, Inter-frame space, back off time, Ack
frames are denoted as overhead. In overhead analysis section, we provided an overhead study
for efficient MAC strategy of IEEE 802.11a extension. The existing MAC protocols show that
throughput is notoriously poor as compare with PHY data rate. There are lot of proposed
schemes for throughput enhancement of IEEE 802.11. Most of them are regarding PHY layer
data rate. But we saw earlier that only PHY data rate is not very important parameters for
MAC enhancement. Therefore, in this chapter we discussed two schemes especially on
overhead reduction of existing MAC protocol. One is Frame Aggregation and another is Burst
Transmission and Acknowledgement (BTA). In frame aggregation scheme in order to reduce
the MAC/PHY overheads of IEEE 802.11 WLAN by aggregating multiple packets into a
single MAC fame. Because the throughput are really suffers due to small size of packets.

47
Important information is that small size IP packets are dominating the all other packets. It is
about 50% Internet packets are below 100 bytes. That is why frame aggregation scheme may
be an important component of IEEE 802.11n. The frame aggregation can be performed above
the MAC SAP very easily with simple device driver modifications. In existing MAC
protocols, all transmitted frame are acknowledged by the receiver end. This issue is about
extra overhead. Due to reduce acknowledgement overhead Burst Transmission and
Acknowledgement (BTA) scheme is proposed. We saw our performance study of BTA that
the overhead has been greatly reduced and the performance has been greatly improved.

48
Chapter 4

Proposed Throughput Enhancement Schemes

4.1 Introduction
Delivering for multimedia applications like High-Definition Television (HDTV), DVD are the
main goal of IEEE 802.11WLAN. By virtue of MIMO technology PHY layer data rate is
sufficiently high. Some IEEE 802.11n proposal expects to support 600Mbps [21]. It has been
shown that MAC utilizes less than 20% of the transportation ability provided by the PHY
layer.[22] There are two main dimension of enhancement of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. One
is the MAC throughput and another is Quality of Services (QoS). Throughput is notoriously
poor due to some overhead of MAC and PHY layer though the PHY data rate is sufficiently
high. QoS is the important issue for delay sensitive multimedia traffic. In this chapter we will
introduce a new MAC mechanism that reducing overhead for enhancement of throughput. To
do so we consider IEEE 802.11e MAC legacy, which provide QoS support in WLAN
networks. The IEEE 802.11e supplement introduces the hybrid coordination function (HCF)
as the medium access control scheme. It is the combination compatible with the legacy 802.11
DCF and PCF and provides stations with prioritized and parameterized QoS access to the
wireless medium. HCF is the combination of both the contention-based and the contention
free access methods, where the contention-based channel access mechanism is called as the
enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) and its contention-free counterpart is known as
the HCF Control Channel Access (HCCA). EDCA has been designed for support of
prioritized traffic similar to DiffServ, whereas HCCA supports parameterized traffic similar to
IntServ Here in this chapter we will concentrate on EDCA access. Two important MAC
overhead reduction components that we have discussed earlier (frame aggregation and BTA)
are combined together to improve MAC efficiency in our throughput enhancement proposal.

4.2 Overview of Extended DCF (EDCF)

In IEEE 802.11 MAC has two mode of access the wireless medium as we mention previous
chapter. An optional second mode, Point Coordination Function (PCF), supports time-
sensitive traffic flows in wireless medium. In infrastructure mode operation, wireless access
points periodically send beacon frames to communicate network identification and
management parameters specific to the wireless network. Between two consecutive beacon
frames, PCF divide the time into a contention-free period and a contention period. With PCF
enabled, a station can transmit data during contention-free polling periods. Due to
unpredictable time of transmission, PCF is not accepted widely. It is very difficult to
distinguish traffic types or sources before entering the DCF and PCF access mode. So the
IEEE developed enhancements in 802.11e to both coordination modes to facilitate QoS. The
enhancement to DCF - Enhanced Distribution Coordination Function (EDCF) - introduces the

49
concept of traffic categories. Each station has eight traffic categories, or priority levels. Using
EDCF, stations try to send data after detecting the medium is idle and after waiting a period

Figure: 4.1 Access mechanism of EDCA.

of time defined by the corresponding traffic category called the Arbitration Inter frame Space
(AIFS). Figure 4.1 show that the access mechanism of EDCF. Graphical representation of
Access Categories (AC) with the parallel backoff entities is shown in Figure 4.1. A low-
priority traffic category will have a bigger AIFS than a high-priority traffic category. Thus
AIFS time duration will differentiate various types of traffic category. Stations with higher-
priority traffic must wait shorter than those with lower-priority traffic to access the medium.
To avoid same category internal collisions, the station counts down an additional random
number of time slots, known as a contention window, before attempting to transmit data. If
another station transmits before the countdown has ended, the station waits for the next idle
period. Then it continues the countdown until it zero. EDCF establishes a probabilistic
priority mechanism to allocate bandwidth based on traffic categories. One of the crucial
concepts introduced by 802.11e draft is Transmission Opportunity (TXOP) defined as an
interval of time when a particular 802.11e station (referred to as QSTA) has the right to
initiate transmissions onto the wireless medium. A TXOP is defined by a starting time and a

50
maximum duration. Transmission opportunity obtained via contention based medium access
is referred to as EDCA TXOP. The duration of EDCA TXOP is limited by a QoS Basis
Services Set (QBSS) -wide TXOP limit. This EDCA TXOP limit is indicated in beacon
frames, but in contention free period the duration of polled TXOP is specified in the poll
frame. Within the limits of each EDCA TXOP, a QSTA is allowed to transmit multiple
frames from the same AC with a SIFS gap between an ACK and the subsequent frame
transmission as depicted in the Figure 4.3. Figure 4.2 shows the basic access mechanism of
EDCA technique.

Figure 4.2 EDCA access mechanisms.

Figure 4.3 EDCA TXOP frames transmissions

The 802.11e protocol also defines a maximum MSDU lifetime per AC, which defines the
maximum time a frame can remain in the MAC state. Once the maximum lifetime has expired
then the frame is dropped from MAC without transmission. This feature can be useful in real
time applications.

51
4.3 Block Acknowledgement schemes in EDCA

In IEEE 802.11e, there are two types of channel access procedure. One is contention based
EDCA and another is hybrid coordination HCCA with contention based access mechanism. In
EDCA procedures, it is not necessary to transmit single MSDU after accessing channel. The
station, which wins the contention gains, can transmit one or more MPDUs (eventually
belonging to different MSDUs) within the TXOP duration. We have already discussed BTA
mechanism in the previous chapter and also evaluated its performance. In this section we will
adopt Block Acknowledgement (BA) schemes in EDCA of IEEE 802.11e. The crucial feature
of IEEE 802.11e is TXOP. TXOP is defined by the starting time and the maximum duration.
The starting time is represented by the time when the medium is determined to be available
under the EDCA access rules; the maximum duration is limited by a threshold, called TXOP
limit. In EDCA rules fragmentation is allowed if whenever the MSDU transmission duration
length is more than the TXOP limit. But in our scheme we do not allow fragmentation due to
introduce more overheads. In order to reduce ACK overhead a new block acknowledges a
scheme is introduced in the 802.11e. Block Acknowledgement is important feature of the new
IEEE 802.11e standard that can improve channel efficiency. Basically, the block ACK
mechanism allows a block of MPDUs to be transmitted, each data burst separated by a SIFS
period, and to be acknowledged by a final aggregated ACK frame, called block ACK. The
block ACK contains detail information about the reception of the whole block via a
corresponding acknowledgement bitmap, and this aggregated ACK frame is transmitted after
an explicit transmitter request. This request is performed through a new control frame, called
block ACK request frame. Note that both the block ACK request and the block ACK control
frames are transmitted with same data transmissions rate. The transmitter can terminate the
block ACK agreement by sending specific notification frame to the receiver. Figure 4.4 show
the block acknowledgement features with EDCA in IEEE 802.11e.

Figure 4.4 Block acknowledgement schemes in EDCA mode.

The maximum number of frames in the block is specified in the setup phase, according to the
recipient reordering buffer size up to the number of MPDUs that can generated by 64 MSDUs
(i.e., 16 *64 = 1024). Note that the block size does not depend on the TXOP limit. In fact, the
originator can split the MPDUs belonging to the same block across different TXOPs.

52
Therefore, a data block can be composed of several data bursts. The block ACK request is
finally transmitted in the same TXOP, which conclude the block, or in a subsequent TXOP.
As a normal ACK, the block ACK reception is expected before the expiration of the block
ACK timeout. If there is no response, the block ACK request is retransmitted until the
maximum retry limit is reached. In order to quickly identify collisions and to reduce the
probability of other stations transmitting during each TXOP, the head-of-burst (HOB) frame
of each new data burst requires to be protected with an immediate ACK. The data burst
protection mechanism can also be based on the RTS/CTS frame exchange. In fact, after the
successful reception of the CTS frame, no other station can try to access the channel during
the time interval specified in the RTS/CTS duration fields.

4.3.1 Assumptions and Analytical frame works

There are two types of Block Ack mechanisms: immediate and delayed. Immediate Block
Ack is suitable for high-bandwidth, low latency traffic while the delayed Block Ack
is suitable for applications that tolerate moderate latency. In this section we will try to
calculate maximum throughput of both immediate block ack and delayed block ack schemes.
Regarding this we will take the following assumptions a) channel are error free or ideal b) all
frame are small enough that does not support fragmentation, because fragmentation introduce
more extra overhead which decrease the system throughput c) Only one active transmitter
station and only one active receiver station in the radio range so that no collision will occur. d)
Frames are always available in the transmitter buffer queue. For the shake of simplicity we
again assume that all frames are in equal in length. For immediate acknowledgement schemes,
If an AC is allocated a TXOP with time duration Ttxop and the size of MPDU is Ldata in
bytes, then the number of MPDU that fit within TXOP limit is calculated by

 Ttxop  …………………………………………..(1)
N= 
 Tmpdu + SIFS × 2 + Tack 

Where Tmpdu and Tack are the time required to transmit a single MPDU and
Acknowledgement respectively. So the throughput of immediate acknowledgement

Ldata × 8 × N
Tthroughput = ……………………………………….(2)
AIFS + CW × Tslottime + Ttxop

Where CW is the mean of Contention Window and Tslottime is the time duration of each slot.

For delayed acknowledgement, we assume that the BlockAckReq(BAR) frame and BlockAck
(BA) frame are in the same TXOP. Figure 4.4 shows the frame exchange sequence. So the
number of MPDU in TXOP is given by

 Ttxop − Tbar + SIFS × 2 − Tba 

N =  ……………………………………………….(3)
 Tmpdu + SIFS 

and the throughput is given by

53
 Ldata × 8 × N
Tthroughput = …………………………………………..(4)
AIFS + CW × Tslottime + Ttxop

Where Tbar and Tba are the time duration to transmit BlockAckReq (BAR) and BlockAck
(BA) respectively. In next chapter, we will see the performance graph of above both
immediate and delayed acknowledge schemes. In next chapter we will evaluate the
performance of block acknowledgement schemes in EDCA.

4.4 Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement (FABA) schemes

4.4.1 Introduction

Earlier this year, IEEE Working Group meeting approved the first draft of IEEE 802.11n [33],
in which the data rate is expected to be as high as 600Mbps. Also the throughput performance
is the main objective of the upcoming IEEE 802.11n standardization. For multimedia
applications, it is recommended that throughput must be greater than 100 Mbps as measured
at the MAC SAP (Service Access Point), i.e., the interface between the MAC and the higher
layer. Industry also seeking better QoS at the MAC layer. A QoS amendment of IEEE 802.11
MAC, IEEE 802.11e [10], aims to provide service differentiations to different traffic types.
Due to MIMO-OFDM technique, now the physical layer data rate (PHY data rate) is
sufficiently high as compare with MAC throughput. So researchers are trying to enhance the
efficiency of MAC throughput as well as QoS. Already there are lot of MAC enhancement
proposals discussing in IEEE standardization committee and some of them take as
standardization. We already mention some possible components of upcoming IEEE 802.11n
standardization. The 802.11n specification adopts the MAC schemes to ensure backward
compatibility with existing IEEE 802.11 specifications. In the section, we propose a new
medium access control (MAC) scheme for the next-generation high-speed WLANs such as
IEEE 802.11n, which is the combination of two important components and also try to evaluate
the throughput performance of this new MAC mechanism in the next chapter.

4.4.2 Mechanism of Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement (FABA) Schemes

The poor performance upcoming of wireless LAN compare to wire network is low
throughput. The mainly reason is that the large amount of overheads add with the MAC and
PHY layers, we already know from above section. In this scheme, we pay attention to
improve the throughput performance of wireless LAN by reducing MAC overheads. To
ensure the QoS, we use EDCA part of legacy IEEE 802.11e.

Both the frame aggregation and block acknowledgement (BA) are popular schemes for
reducing MAC and PHY layer overheads. In section 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 of chapter 3, we have
already discussed these both frame aggregation and block acknowledgement schemes
respectively and also evaluated the throughput performance. Individually the throughput
performance of these schemes is highly satisfactory. To achieve higher throughput for IEEE
802.11n standard, we combine the above two popular components in our proposed FABA
schemes.

54
To describe the mechanism, we will consider three phases of FABA scheme. Firstly frame
aggregation phase, secondly channel access phase then finally block acknowledgement phase.
In frame aggregation, multiple small frames aggregate into a single MAC frame up to
threshold value. There are four possible aggregation mechanisms: A-MSDU, A-MPDU, A-
PPDU, and PPDU bursting. They belong to different levels: MSDU aggregation is between
LLC (Logical Link Control) and MAC, MPDU aggregation is between MAC and PHY, and
PPDU aggregation and PPDU bursting are at PHY [34]. The task of frame aggregation can be
made simpler if it performs above the MAC SAP. Even without any change of hardware, it
can be implemented. It is possible to implement by changing only devices driver. Above
MAC SAP, we can aggregate multiple IP packets into a single chunk, and send it to the MAC
as a single frame or more exactly MAC Service Data Unit (MSDU). Therefore, the MAC
layer can deal with the aggregated frame as a normal MSDU [4]. Figure of the frame
aggregation scheme is shown in figure 3.9 of the previous chapter. From figure 3.10 shows
that IP packet size distribution. The measurement was taken in the IEEE 802.11 standard
meeting room in the mooring of July 22nd, 2003. Form this pie chart, we see 49.40 % packets
are below 64 bytes and 26.45 % are within 64 to 127 bytes. From this it can be seen that over
70% of packets are small, under 128 bytes. It is about 15 % packets are over 1024 bytes. So
small size packets are dominating over big size packets and degrade the performance of total
system throughput. In frame aggregation phase, it is obviously increase the throughput
performance because of greatly reduce PHY and MAC overhead.

In access to the wireless media phase, we consider the EDCA backoff procedure of IEEE
802.11e standard to ensure the QoS. By adopting this mechanism, the aggregated frames will
have the same destination address and same level of QoS priority. First small frames are
aggregated above MAC-SAP, which has same distination address and same level of QoS
priority then this aggregated frame contend for the backoff priode. The duration of the backoff
periode are vary in accroding to AC of EDCA mechanism because of the arbitration inter
frame spacing (AIFS), is different for each AC. In below figure 4.5 show the total FABA
mechanism.

55
Figure: 4.5 Frame aggregation and Block Acknowledgement (FABA) Schemes.

Each AC content its backoff duration as like individuals STA, which is competing with each
other’s and access channel.
In IEEE 802.11e, there is a mechanism, burst transmission, provided for STA to transmit a
number of frames in a TXOP. While it provides an approach to save the contention time of
each frame, there are still overheads in each transmitting frame [31]. Transmitting longer
frames may have a better throughput than transmitting shorter frames, adopting the
concatenation mechanism; the system can achieve the throughput of transmitting longer
frames. Another overhead the contention time of each frame will remove using burst
transmission mechanism. But an important overhead, like acknowledgement overhead should
be removed. So do that Block Acknowledgement mechanism is introduced in FABA scheme.
We have seen the BTA mechanism in the previous chapter. In TXOP duration, multiple
frame can transmit with single backoff periode. When all frames transmitted, a special frame
called BrustAckReq frame (BAR) frame transmitted to the receiver so that let the receiver
knows burst transmission is ended and acknowledgement should be sent to the transmitter via
BrustAck frame(BA). Figure 4.6 and figure 4.7 shows the frame format of BrustAckReq
frame (BAR) and BrustAck frame(BA) respectively. There are two ways the block
acknowledgement schemes can be implemented. One is immediate acknowledgement and
another is delayed acknowledgement. We already discussed those two types block
acknowledgement in section 4.3.1. For some multimedia applications such as VoIP,
immediate block acknowledgement is preferred because of short delay and jitter and those
multimedia applications where throughput is more important than delay and jitter, delayed
block acknowledgement is preferred. However in both case, overhead is greatly reduced and
consequently improvement of throughput is high. Both BurstAckReq (BAR) and BurstAck
(BA) frame are transmitted at the same rate used for data transmissions.

56
BrustAckReq frame (BAR)

FC DU RA TA Burst Ack Request

Bits:0-3 4-15 CRC
TID R

Figure: 4.6 BurstAckReq frame from sender to receiver.

BrustAck frame(BA)

FC DU RA TA Burst Ack Control SC BM CRC

Bits:0-3 4-14 15
TID R W

Figure: 4.7 BurstAck frame from receiver to sender.

4.4.3 Algorithm for FABA schemes.

Pseudo code of FABA Schemes

if (all frames have same source and destination address)

Aggregation Phase:
Initialisation, i=0; aggre_frame=0;

while(aggre_frame< fragmen_thresh)
if (frame[i]+aggre_frame < fragmen_thresh and have same level priority of QoS )
aggre_frame= aggre_frame+frame[i]
i=i+1;
do

Contention Phase:

According to QoS priority level

Select AC (Access Category)

switch ( QoS priority level)

case AC0: AIFS [AC0];

cwindow( ); break;

57
case AC1: AIFS [AC1];
cwindow( ); break;

case AC2: AIFS [AC2];

cwindow( ); break;

case AC3: AIFS [AC3];

cwindow( );

Block Acknowledgement Phase:

if (Immediate acknowledgement)
after SIFS duration block acknowledge for current aggregate frame;
if (delayed acknowledgement)
after transmitting all bursts within TXOP block acknowledgement for whole bursts.

4.5 Summary
In this chapter, we discussed about extended DCF (EDCF) and block acknowledgement
schemes based on IEEE 802.11e EDCA mode. Also a new throughput enhancement MAC
mechanism is discussed, called Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgement (FABA). In
this MAC enhancement schemes two important MAC enhancement components are combined
with each other based on EDCA of IEEE 802.11e. Overhead can greatly negative impact on
MAC efficiency. Overhead must be reduced to improve MAC efficiency. FABA mechanism
reduce MAC overhead, IFS overhead, contention overhead, PHY preamble and ACK
overhead. Frame aggregation provides an excellence mechanism to reduce PHY and MAC
overhead due to small size packet. Again block acknowledgement reduce acknowledgement
overhead. So this FABA mechanism greatly improves MAC performance by reducing
overhead.

58
Chapter 5

Performance Evaluation using simulation

5.1 Introduction

The previous chapter we described the access mechanism of IEEE 802.11e and block
acknowledgement schemes. Also we introduced a new mechanism for throughput
enhancement, which is called FABA schemes. This is the combination of possibly two
important components of IEEE 802.11n. Here we will try to evaluate the performance of
legacy IEEE 802.11, frame aggregation, BTA schemes and also the new FABA mechanism
using simulation. All above models are implemented through computer code written in the
Matlab 7.1. To model these schemes we consider some necessary assumption in the next
section 5.2 and simulate these results in the section 5.3. However, it is important that how the
performance of FABA schemes is better than others above schemes.

5.2 Necessary Assumptions

For the calculation of maximum theoretical throughput and evaluate the performance of
legacy IEEE 802.11 and enhanced FABA schemes, we will consider the following
assumptions

○ there is only one active station in the radio range. No other station within the BSS.
○ all packets have the same source and destination address.
○ Packets are always available in the buffer queue.
○ channel is always error free (i.e ideal). So there are no collisions during transmission.
○ all packets are small enough that no fragmentation will be allowed.(i.e packets are
smaller than the fragmentation threshold)

59
5.3 Simulating Result

5.3.1 Frame aggregation schemes

T h ro u g h p u t V s P a y lo a d
70
9 M bps
24 M bps
60
54 M bps
108 M bps
50 216 M bps
Throughput

40

30

20

10

0
0 500 1000 1500 2000
P a y lo a d in B y t e s

Figure: 5.1 Frame aggregation schemes, Payload vs Throughput at different PHY data rate

60
 Throughput Vs Data rate
90
Payload 100 Bytes
80 Payload 500 Bytes
Payload 1000 Bytes
70 Payload 1500 Bytes
Payload 2000 Bytes
60
Throughput

50

40

30

20

10

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Data rate in Mbps

Figure: 5.2 Frame aggregation scheme, PHY data rate vs Throughput at different payload in
byte.

PHY data rate vs Throughput(Without Frame aggregation)

15

10
Throughput

Random packet size with uniform distribution

0
0 100 200 300 400 500
Data rate in Mbps

Figure: 5.3 show the PHY data rare vs Throughput where no frame aggregation scheme is
implemented. Random packet size is chosen.

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5.3.2 BTA or Block Acknowledgement Scheme

This below simulation is block acknowledgement scheme in EDCA mode of IEEE 802.11e. Here we
assume that only one AC is active. i.e all traffic are in same access priority .

100
9 Mbps
90 24 Mbps
54 Mbps
80 108 Mbps
216 Mbps
70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
0 500 1000 1500

Figure: 5.4 show Payload in byte vs Throughput at different data rate.

5.3.3 FABA Schemes

Here in simulation, we aggregate all packets up to the threshold value. Due to randomize
packets length the following graph does not show smooth curves.

62
 PHY data rate vs Throughput(FABA Schemes)
250

200

150
Throughput

100

50

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Data rate in Mbps

Figure 5.5: show the PHY data rate vs Throughput.

PHY data rate vs Throughput(FABA Schemes)

200
Data Burst 1
180 Data Burst 2
Data Burst 3
160 Data Burst 4
Data Burst 5
140

120
Throughput

100

80

60

40

20

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Data rate in Mbps

Figure: 5.6 show the PHY data rate vs Throughput at different number of Burst within TXOP
duration.

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5.4 Summary

In this chapter, we simulate some proposed schemes and also simulate a new MAC
enhancement scheme. To simulate those we first consider some assumptions in the section
5.2. In figure 5.1, figure 5.2 and figure 5.3, we noticed that the throughput performance of
block acknowledgement scheme and frame aggregation scheme are much better than the
legacy existing MAC protocols. From figure 5.2, another observation is that the throughput
performance is independent with PHY data rate. Especially small packet sizes are more suffer
than the bigger packets size. For example, 100, 500 and 1000 byte payloads are independent
at 100, 600 and 700 Mbps data rate respectively. However those above two schemes are not
sufficient enough for multimedia applications. Those both two schemes provide below 100
Mbps throughput. But industries are seeking above 100 Mbps. Here we proposed a new MAC
enhancement scheme is called FABA, which is able to provide as sufficient enough for
multimedia applications. Figure 5.5 and figure 5.6 shows the simulation of FABA scheme.
Figure 5.5 shows the PHY data rate versus Throughput of FABA scheme and figure 5.6
shows PHY data rate versus throughput at different number of burst within TXOP duration.

64
Chapter 6

Conclusions and Future Work

6.1 Conclusions
This research mainly focuses on the throughput enhancement of legacy IEEE 802.11 MAC
protocol. The two parameters, throughput and QoS are now main challenge for multimedia
applications in wireless networks. Throughput parameter are very poor as compare with PHY
data rate, even data rate goes infinite high. After certain PHY data rate, throughput are almost
independent of data rate when data packets are fixed size. This is only due to large amount
overhead adding with every data packets. So overhead reduction is the best solution to
enhance the throughput for next generation communication.

Here we discussed two important overhead reduction mechanisms, which sufficiently improve
the throughput performance. One is frame aggregation and another is block acknowledgement
scheme. In performance analysis graph of both schemes, shows that the throughput
performance are below 100 Mbps. As we mention previous chapter that industries are seeking
higher data rate for multimedia applications. i.e more than 100 Mbps. So we make an easy
comment that the above two important components are not sufficient enough for IEEE
802.11n individually. To fulfil the throughput performance of IEEE 802.11n, we proposed a
new MAC mechanism. The new FABA MAC mechanism is the combination of above two
important components, which improve the throughput performance as our desire. In this
research work we also simulate the FABA scheme, which shows the throughput performance
more than 160 Mbps when the number of burst within TXOP duration is 5 and PHY data rate
600 Mbps.

6.2 Future work

There are several important areas for future work. This research work is only based on the
best-case scenario. i.e only we try to figure out the theoretical maximum throughput. So it is
needed to more study on saturation case scenario, when the large number of stations are
involved. We consider EDCA schemes to evaluate block acknowledgement schemes in our
FABA scheme. But in our simulation we consider only one AC. So QoS study in combination
with throughput may be another great issue for IEEE 802.11n. Here we consider the channel
is error free i.e always ideal and we take 2304 byte as fragmentation threshold for
performance evaluation. But in reality channel is always error porn. So there is a big issue
that how the fragmentation threshold depend on channel quality or channel condition. Frame
aggregation should be in proper layer due to QoS ensures. Here frame aggregation is
considering only when the source and destination address are same for all packets. If the
source and destination address are different then the aggregation schemes need further studied
to find out the proper aggregation layer.

65
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