Resolving 802.11 performance anomalies through QoS differentiation

Abstract

It was recently shown that 802.11b MAC has an "anomaly" that the throughput of high bit-rate terminals in good channel condition is down-equalized to that of the lowest bit-rate peer in the network. In this letter, we analytically prove that the phenomenon can be cleanly resolved through configuring the initial contention window size inversely proportional to the bit-rate. Although contention window size variation has been used to induce throughput differentiation among equal bit-rate terminals, our work is the first to apply the technique to different bit-rate terminals.