Can CSMA/CA networks be made fair?

  • Authors:

  • Ying Jian;Shigang Chen

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA;University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 14th ACM international conference on Mobile computing and networking
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We demonstrate that CSMA/CA networks, including IEEE 802.11 networks, exhibit severe fairness problem in many scenarios, where some hosts obtain most of the channel's bandwidth while others starve. Most existing solutions require nodes to overhear transmissions made by contending nodes and, based on the overheard information, adjust local rates to achieve fairness among all contending links. Their underlying assumption is that transmissions made by contending nodes can be overheard. However, this assumption holds only when the transmission range is equal to the carrier sensing range, which is not true in reality. As our study reveals, the overhearing-based solutions, as well as several non-overhearing AIMD solutions, cannot achieve MAC-layer fairness in various settings. We propose a new rate control protocol, called PISD (Proportional Increase Synchronized multiplicative Decrease). Without relying on overhearing, it provides fairness in CSMA/CA networks, particularly IEEE 802.11 networks, by using only local information and performing localized operations. It combines several novel rate control mechanisms, including synchronized multiplicative decrease, proportional increase, and background transmission. We prove that PISD converges and achieves (weighted) fairness.