Stability and Queueing Analysis of IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function

TL;DR

This paper develops a queuing model for IEEE 802.11 DCF under non-saturated traffic, analyzing stability, throughput, and delay for basic and RTS/CTS access mechanisms, with results verified by simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a new Geo/G/1 queue-based model for non-saturated IEEE 802.11 DCF, extending Bianchi's saturated model to analyze stability and performance.

Findings

RTS/CTS mechanism is more stable than Basic access.

Bounded delay region is a subset of stable throughput region.

Model predictions are validated by simulation results.

Abstract

A widely adopted two-dimensional Markov chain model of the IEEE 802.11 DCF was introduced by Bianchi to characterize the backoff behavior of a single node under a saturated traffic condition. Using this approach, we propose a queuing model for the 802.11 DCF under a non-saturated traffic environment. The input buffer of each node is modeled as a Geo/G/1 queue, and the packet service time distribution is derived from Markov state space of 802.11 DCF with the underlying scheduling algorithm. The DCF defines two access mechanisms, namely the Basic access mechanism and the request-to-send/clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) access mechanism. Based on our model, performance analyses of both schemes are studied with probabilistic exponential backoff scheduling. We obtain the characteristic equation of network throughput and expressions of packet queueing delay. Specifically, we obtain the stable throughput and bounded delay regions with respect to the retransmission factor according to the basic queueing analysis. For both access schemes, the bounded delay region is a subset of the stable throughput region. Our results show that the RTS/CTS access mechanism is more stable and performs better than the Basic access mechanism. The analysis in this paper is verified by simulation results.