Sittin'On the Dock of the (WiFi) Bay: On the Frame Aggregation under IEEE 802.11 DCF

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the trade-off between efficiency and delay caused by frame aggregation in IEEE 802.11 DCF, establishing conditions for its benefit on average delay through stochastic modeling and numerical experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic framework to determine optimal frame aggregation levels that minimize delay, providing practical guidelines for IEEE 802.11 DCF performance optimization.

Findings

Frame aggregation reduces transmission congestion.

Optimal aggregation levels improve average delay.

Numerical results validate the theoretical conditions.

Abstract

It is well known that frame aggregation in Internet communications improves transmission efficiency. However, it also causes a delay that for some real-time communications is inappropriate, thus creating a trade-off between efficiency and delay. In this paper, we establish the conditions for frame aggregation under the IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol to be beneficial on average delay. To do so, we first describe the transmission time in IEEE 802.11 in a stochastic framework and then we calculate the optimal value of the frames that, when aggregated, saves transmission time in the long term. Our findings, discussed with numerical experimentation, show that frame aggregation reduces transmission congestion and transmission delays.