TY - JOUR

T1 - A survey of QoS enhancements for IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN

AU - Ni, Qiang

AU - Romdhani, L.

AU - Turletti, T.

PY - 2004

Y1 - 2004

N2 - Quality-of-service (QoS) is a key problem of today's IP networks. Many frameworks (ImServ, DiffServ, MPLS etc.) have been proposed to provide service differentiation in the Internet. At the same time, the Internet is becoming more and more heterogeneous due to the recent explosion of wireless networks. In wireless environments, bandwidth is scarce and channel conditions are time-varying and sometimes highly lossy. Many previous research works show that what works well in a wired network cannot be directly applied in the wireless environment. Although IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) is the most widely used IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) standard today, it cannot provide QoS support for the increasing number of multimedia applications. Thus. a large number of 802.11 QoS enhancement schemes have been proposed, each one focusing on a particular mode. This paper summarizes all these schemes and presents a survey of current research activities. First, we analyze the QoS limitations of IEEE 802.11 wireless MAC layers. Then, different QoS enhancement techniques proposed for 802.11 WLAN are described and classified along with their advantages/drawbacks. Finally, the upcoming IEEE 802.1 le QoS enhancement standard is introduced and studied in detail.

AB - Quality-of-service (QoS) is a key problem of today's IP networks. Many frameworks (ImServ, DiffServ, MPLS etc.) have been proposed to provide service differentiation in the Internet. At the same time, the Internet is becoming more and more heterogeneous due to the recent explosion of wireless networks. In wireless environments, bandwidth is scarce and channel conditions are time-varying and sometimes highly lossy. Many previous research works show that what works well in a wired network cannot be directly applied in the wireless environment. Although IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) is the most widely used IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) standard today, it cannot provide QoS support for the increasing number of multimedia applications. Thus. a large number of 802.11 QoS enhancement schemes have been proposed, each one focusing on a particular mode. This paper summarizes all these schemes and presents a survey of current research activities. First, we analyze the QoS limitations of IEEE 802.11 wireless MAC layers. Then, different QoS enhancement techniques proposed for 802.11 WLAN are described and classified along with their advantages/drawbacks. Finally, the upcoming IEEE 802.1 le QoS enhancement standard is introduced and studied in detail.

KW - IEEE 802.11

KW - medium access control (MAC)

KW - quality-of-service (QoS)

KW - distributed coordination function (DCF)

KW - point coordination function (PCF)

KW - IEEE 802.11e

KW - hybrid coordination function (HCF)

U2 - 10.1002/wcm.196

DO - 10.1002/wcm.196

M3 - Journal article

VL - 4

SP - 547

EP - 566

JO - Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

JF - Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

SN - 1530-8669

IS - 5

ER -