Control Theoretic Optimization of 802.11 WLANs: Implementation and Experimental Evaluation

In 802.11 WLANs, adapting the contention parameters to network conditions results in substantial performance improvements. Even though the ability to change these parameters has been available in standard devices for years, so far no adaptive mechanism using this functionality has been validated in...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Serrano, Pablo, Patras, Paul, Mannocci, Andrea, Mancuso, Vincenzo, Banchs, Albert|||0000-0003-3544-8537
Tipo de documento: artigo
Data de publicação:2013
País:España
Recursos:IMDEA Networks Institute
Repositório:IMDEA Networks Institute Digital Repository
Idioma:inglês
OAI Identifier:oai:dspace.networks.imdea.org:20.500.12761/1073
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12761/1073
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2012.09.010.
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Q Science::Q Science (General)
Q Science::QA Mathematics::QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
T Technology::T Technology (General)
T Technology::TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
T Technology::TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
WLAN
802.11
Control theory
Experimentation
Descrição
Resumo:In 802.11 WLANs, adapting the contention parameters to network conditions results in substantial performance improvements. Even though the ability to change these parameters has been available in standard devices for years, so far no adaptive mechanism using this functionality has been validated in a realistic deployment. In this paper we report our experiences with implementing and evaluating two adaptive algorithms based on control theory, one centralized and one distributed, in a large-scale testbed consisting of 18 commercial off-the-shelf devices. We conduct extensive measurements, considering different network conditions in terms of number of active nodes, link qualities and traffic generated. We show that both algorithms significantly outperform the standard configuration in terms of total throughput. We also identify the limitations inherent in distributed schemes, and demonstrate that the centralized approach substantially improves performance under a large variety of scenarios, which confirms its suitability for real deployments.