Differentiation mechanisms for IEEE 802.11

TLDR

The IETF is developing service differentiation, but in wireless networks with limited bandwidth and variable channel conditions, IP‑level differentiation alone is insufficient without lower‑layer support. This work proposes three IEEE 802.11 service‑differentiation schemes. The schemes scale the contention window, assign distinct inter‑frame spacings, or use different maximum frame lengths per user, and are evaluated via TCP and UDP simulations.

Abstract

The IETF is currently working on service differentiation in the Internet. However, in wireless environments where bandwidth is scarce and channel conditions are variable, IP differentiated services are sub-optimal without lower layers' support. We present three service differentiation schemes for IEEE 802.11. The first one is based on scaling the contention window according to the priority of each flow or user. The second one assigns different inter-frame spacings to different users. Finally, the last one uses different maximum frame lengths for different users. We simulate and analyze the performance of each scheme with TCP and UDP flows.