The effect of contention in CSMA networks: Model and fairness protocol

Authors:
Vinay Kolar;Karthik Bharath;Nael B. Abu-Ghazaleh;Janne Riihijärvi
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Doha, Qatar;Department of Statistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA;Department of Computer Science, State University of New York, Binghamton, USA;Institute for Networked Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Venue:
Performance Evaluation
Year:
2011

Citing 15
Cited 2

MACAW: a media access protocol for wireless LAN's

SIGCOMM '94 Proceedings of the conference on Communications architectures, protocols and applications
Achieving MAC layer fairness in wireless packet networks

MobiCom '00 Proceedings of the 6th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking
Priority scheduling in wireless ad hoc networks

Proceedings of the 3rd ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing
Fair medium access in 802.11 based wireless ad-hoc networks

MobiHoc '00 Proceedings of the 1st ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing
A scalable model for channel access protocols in multihop ad hoc networks

Proceedings of the 10th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking
Study of the impact of asymmetry and carrier sense mechanism in IEEE 802.11 multi-hops networks through a basic case

PE-WASUN '04 Proceedings of the 1st ACM international workshop on Performance evaluation of wireless ad hoc, sensor, and ubiquitous networks
Idle sense: an optimal access method for high throughput and fairness in rate diverse wireless LANs

Proceedings of the 2005 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications
Modeling media access in embedded two-flow topologies of multi-hop wireless networks

Proceedings of the 11th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking
Determining the end-to-end throughput capacity in multi-hop networks: methodology and applications

SIGMETRICS '06/Performance '06 Proceedings of the joint international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems
Numerical Solutions of Renewal-Type Integral Equations

INFORMS Journal on Computing
Scheduling aware network flow models for multi-hop wireless networks

WOWMOM '08 Proceedings of the 2008 International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks
Contention in multi-hop wireless networks: model and fairness analysis

Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Modeling, analysis and simulation of wireless and mobile systems
Enhancing IEEE 802.11 MAC in congested environments

Computer Communications
Back-of-the-Envelope Computation of Throughput Distributions in CSMA Wireless Networks

IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
IEEE 802.11n: enhancements for higher throughput in wireless LANs

IEEE Wireless Communications

Proportional fairness in MAC layer channel access of IEEE 802.11s EDCA based wireless mesh networks

Ad Hoc Networks
Rate adaptation scheme for IEEE 802.11-based MANETs

Journal of Network and Computer Applications

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Multi-hop wireless networks using Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) suffer from various forms of unfairness. A majority of the existing work focuses on fairness issues due to hidden terminals and the impact on backoff mechanisms. This paper focuses on a more fundamental form of unfairness that arises due to unequal contention opportunities at a node; some nodes rarely observe an idle channel since two or more interferers can transmit together. Contention unfairness is unrelated to hidden terminals. The paper analyzes the impact of contention and provides insight into developing solutions for contention unfairness. We first develop a model-from first principles-for contention in IEEE 802.11 networks. The accuracy of the model is validated through simulations and the results show that such unfairness is a common phenomenon. Based on the insights gained from the model, we propose and evaluate distributed schemes that reduce the effect of unfairness due to contention. We show that contention unfairness occurs frequently in general scenarios. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocols improve the overall system performance by providing greater fairness with a small reduction in throughput.