In unlicensed spectrum, wireless communications employing carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) suffer from longer transmission delay time as the number of user terminals (UTs) increases, because packet collisions are more likely to occur. To cope with this problem, this paper proposes a new multiuser detection (MUD) scheme that uses both request-to-send (RTS) and enhanced clear-to-send (eCTS) for high-reliable and low-latency wireless communications. As in conventional MUD scheme, the metric-combining MUD (MC-MUD) calculates log likelihood functions called metrics and accumulates the metrics for the maximum likelihood detection (MLD). To avoid increasing the number of states for MLD, MC-MUD forces the relevant UTs to retransmit their packets until all the collided packets are correctly detected, which requires a kind of central control and reduces the system throughput. To overcome these drawbacks, the proposed scheme, which is referred to as cancelling MC-MUD (CMC-MUD), deletes replicas of some of the collided packets from the received signals, once the packets are correctly detected during the retransmission. This cancellation enables new UTs to transmit their packets and then performs MLD without increasing the number of states, which improves the system throughput without increasing the complexity. In addition, the proposed scheme adopts RTS and eCTS. One UT that suffers from packet collision transmits RTS before the retransmission. Then, the corresponding access point (AP) transmits eCTS including addresses of the other UTs, which have experienced the same packet collision. To reproduce the same packet collision, these other UTs transmit their packets once they receive the eCTS. Computer simulations under one AP conditions evaluate an average carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR) range in which the proposed scheme is effective, and clarify that the transmission delay time of the proposed scheme is shorter than that of the conventional schemes. In two APs environments that can cause the hidden terminal problem, it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme achieves shorter transmission delay times than the conventional scheme with RTS and conventional CTS.

Wireless Full-Duplex (FD) communication can double the point-to-point throughput. To obtain the full benefits of the FD technique in multi-hop networks, its potential throughput performance in multi-hop networks should be clarified qualitatively and quantitatively. Developing an analytical model for FD multi-hop networks is effective and useful for not only clarifying such network dynamics but also developing the optimal protocol design. However, generalized analytical expression for the end-to-end throughput of FD multi-hop networks has not been proposed. This paper proposes analytical expressions for the end-to-end throughput of string-topology wireless FD multi-hop networks. Our approach is to integrate with the analytical model of the airtime expression, which is an effective analytical approach of the throughput analysis for Half-Duplex (HD) multi-hop networks, and the Markov-chain model considering the FD MAC operation. The proposed model clarify the detailed effect of the FD MAC operation on the throughput performance in multi-hop networks. In particular, it can obtain the end-to-end throughput of FD multi-hop networks for arbitrary number of hops, arbitrary payload size and arbitrary value of the minimum contention window. The analytical expressions verified by comparisons with the simulation results. From the comparisons with the results in HD multi-hop networks, we confirm the effectiveness of the FD communication in multi-hop networks.

This paper proposes a novel access technique that enables uplink multiuser multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) access with small overhead in distributed wireless networks. The proposed access technique introduces a probe packet that is sent to all terminals to judge whether they have the right to transmit their signals or not. The probe packet guarantees high quality MU-MIMO signal transmission when a minimum mean square error (MMSE) filter is applied at the access point, which results in high frequency utilization efficiency. Computer simulation reveals that the proposed access achieves more than twice of the capacity obtained by the traditional carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) with a single user MIMO, when the access point with 5 antennas is surrounded by the terminals with 2 antennas.

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard enables a short range, low data rate and low power communication between devices in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In IEEE 802.15.4, a slotted carrier sensing multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) algorithm is employed to coordinate a large number of sensor devices. Unlike IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN), energy consumption requirements enable it to use fewer number of backoffs, which adversely increase collisions, resulting in degradation of energy consumption. In this letter, we devise an adaptive backoff scheme in WSN whose backoff range is adjusted depending on the contention level, and present its Markov model for mathematical analysis. The proposed scheme is analyzed and its efficiency is validated by ns-2 simulation in respect to network throughput and energy consumption. Its performance is also compared with the standard and previous works, showing that it outperforms them for a whole range of arrival rate.

Efficient use of heterogeneous wireless access networks is necessary to maximize the capacity of the 5G mobile communications system. The wireless local area networks (WLANs) are considered to be one of the key wireless access networks because of the proliferation of WLAN-capable mobile devices. However, throughput starvation can occur due to the well-known exposed/hidden terminal problem in carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) based channel access mechanism, and this problem is a critical issue with wireless LAN systems. This paper proposes two novel schemes to identify starved access points (APs) and user equipments (UEs) which throughputs are relatively low. One scheme identifies starved APs by observing the transmission delay of beacon signals periodically transmitted by APs. The other identifies starved UEs by using the miscaptured beacon signals ratio at UEs. Numerous computer simulations verify that that the schemes can identify starved APs and UEs having quite low throughput and are superior to the conventional graph-based identification scheme. In addition, AP and UE management with the proposed schemes has the potential to improve system throughput and reduce the number of low throughput UEs.

Long-distance wireless local area networks (WLANs) are the key enablers of wide-area and low-cost access networks in rural areas. In a WLAN, the long propagation delay between an access point (AP) and stations (STAs) significantly degrades the throughput and creates a throughput imbalance because the delay causes unexpected frame collisions. This paper summarizes the problems caused in the medium access control (MAC) mechanism of the WLAN by a long propagation delay. We propose a MAC protocol for solving the delay-induced throughput degradation and the throughput imbalance between the uplink and the downlink in WLANs to address these problems. In the protocol, the AP extends NAV duration of CTS frame to protect an ACK frame and transmits its data frame to avoid delay induced frame collisions by piggybacking on the ACK frame transmission. We also provide a throughput model for the proposed protocol based on the Bianchi model. A numerical analysis using the proposed throughput model and simulation evaluation demonstrate that the proposed protocol increases the system throughput by 150% compared with that obtained using the conventional method, and the uplink throughput can be increased to the same level as the downlink throughput.

Combining heterogeneous wireless networks that cross licensed and unlicensed spectra is a promising way of supporting the surge in mobile traffic. The unlicensed band is mostly used by wireless LAN (WLAN) nodes which employ carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). Since the number of WLAN devices and their traffic are increasing, the wireless resource of the unlicensed band is expected be more depleted in 2020s. In such a wireless environment, the throughput could be extremely low and unstable due to the hidden terminal problem and exposed terminal problem despite of the large resources of the allocated frequency band and high peak PHY rate. In this paper, we propose user equipment (UE) centric access in the unlicensed band, with support by licensed band access in the mobile network. The proposed access enables robust downlink transmission from the access point (AP) to the UEs by mitigating the hidden terminal problem. The licensed spectrum access passes information on the user data waiting at the AP to the UEs and triggers UE reception opportunity (RXOP) acquisition. Furthermore, the adaptive use of UE centric downlink access is presented by using the channel utilization measured at the AP. Computer simulations confirm that licensed access assistance enhances the robustness of the unlicensed band access against the hidden terminal problem.

Wireless sensor networks play an important role in several industries. Ad-hoc networks with multi-hop transmissions are considered suitable for wireless sensor networks because of their high scalability and low construction cost. However, a lack of centralized control makes it difficult to respond to congestion when system capacity is exceeded. Therefore, the analysis of system capacity is a critical issue for system design. In this paper, we propose a novel zone division model to analyze the capacity of multi-hop wireless sensor networks using carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance protocols. We divide the one-hop area to a gateway (GW) into two zones: an outer zone, where access nodes (ANs) can relay packets from multi-hop ANs, and an inner zone where ANs cannot relay packets. Using this approach, we calculate the packet loss for each zone to estimate the capacity, considering the difference in the communication range of the GW and ANs, as well as the collision with hidden nodes. Comparisons with simulation results and the conventional method show that our model achieves higher estimation accuracy.

The IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) is based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. CSMA/CA uses a backoff mechanism to avoid collisions among stations (STAs). One disadvantage of backoff mechanisms is that STAs must wait for some period of time before transmission, which degrades spectral efficiency. Moreover, a backoff algorithm cannot completely avoid collisions. We have proposed a novel medium access control (MAC) scheme called the visual recognition-based medium access control (VRMAC) scheme, which uses an LED-camera communication technique. STAs send media-access request messages by blinking their LEDs in VRMAC scheme. An access point (AP) receives the messages via its camera, and then allocates transmission opportunities to the STAs by transmitting control frames. Since the transmission rate of the LED-camera communication is lower than WLAN transmission, the delay of access requesting causes and it could decrease the system throughput of the VRMAC system based WLAN. We reveal the effect of the delay for TCP flows and propose enhanced access procedures to eliminate the effect of the delay. Our simulation results demonstrate that VRMAC scheme increases the system throughput in UDP and TCP traffic. Moreover, the scenario-based evaluations reveal that VRMAC scheme also decreases the session delay which is a metric of quality of experience (QoE) for TCP applications.

In this paper, we propose a novel energy-efficient sensor device management scheme called sensor device personalization (SDP) for the Internet of things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) based on the IEEE 802.15.4 unslotted carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). In the IoT and WSNs with the star topology, a coordinator device (CD), user devices (UDs), and sensor devices (SDs) compose a network, and the UDs such as smart phones and tablet PCs manage the SDs, which consist of various sensors and communication modules, e.g., smart fridge, robot cleaner, heating and cooling system, and so on, through the CD. Thus, the CD consumes a lot of energy to relay packets between the UDs and the SDs and also has a longer packet transmission delay. Therefore, in order to reduce the energy consumption and packet transmission delay, in the proposed SDP scheme, the UDs obtain a list of SD profiles (including SDs' address information) that the UDs want to manage from the CD, and then the UDs and the SDs directly exchange control messages using the addresses of the SDs. Through analytical models, we show that the proposed SDP scheme outperforms the conventional scheme in terms of normalized throughput, packet transmission delay, packet loss probability, and total energy consumption.

To enhance the throughput of wireless local area networks (WLANs) by efficiently utilizing the radio resource, a distributed coordination function-based (DCF-based) orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) WLAN system has been proposed. In the system, since each OFDMA sub-channel is assigned to the associated station with the highest channel gain, the transmission rate of DATA frames can be enhanced thanks to multi-user diversity. However, the optimum allocation of OFDMA sub-channels requires the estimation of channel state information (CSI) of all associated stations, and this incurs excessive signaling overhead. As the number of associated stations increases, the signaling overhead severely degrades the throughput of DCF-based OFDMA WLAN. To reduce the signaling overhead while obtaining a sufficient diversity gain, this paper proposes a channel access scheme that performs multiple DCF-based channel access. The key idea of the proposed scheme is to introduce additional DCF-based prioritized access along with the traditional DCF-based random access. In the additional DCF-based prioritized access, by dynamically adjusting contention window size according to the CSI of each station, only the stations with better channel state inform their CSI to the access point (AP), and the signaling overhead can be reduced while maintaining high multi-user diversity gain. Numerical results confirm that the proposed channel access scheme enhances the throughput of OFDMA WLAN.

We discuss the division of radio resources in the time and frequency domains for wireless local area network (WLAN) devices powered with microwave energy. In general, there are two ways to avoid microwave power transmission (MPT) from influencing data communications: adjacent channel operation of continuous MPT and WLAN data transmission and co-channel operation of intermittent MPT and WLAN data transmission. Experimental results reveal that, even when we implement these methods, several problems arise because WLAN devices have been developed without supposing the existence of MPT. One problem clarified in our experiment is that adjacent channel operation at 2.4GHz does not necessarily perform well owing to the interference from MPT. This interference occurs regardless of the frequency separation at 2.4GHz. The other problem is that intermittent MPT could result in throughput degradation owing to the data rate control algorithm and the association scheme of the WLAN. In addition, the experimental results imply that a microwave energy source and a WLAN device should share information on the timings of intermittent MPT and data transmission to avoid buffer overflow.

The IEEE 802.11 distributed coordinated function (DCF) adopts carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) as its medium access control (MAC) protocol. In a wireless local area network (WLAN) stations (STAs) congested situation, the performance of the WLAN system is significantly degraded due to a collision between the STAs. In this paper, we propose a simple method that decreases the number of frame collisions. After a successful transmission, the proposed method refrains from transmission during certain time which is defined as post-inter-frame space (Post-IFS). This mechanism improves the system performance including the throughput characteristics and access delay by reducing the number of competing STAs. The length of the Post-IFS is a key factor in improving the system performance for the proposed method. If the access point (AP) can estimate the optimal value of the Post-IFS, collision-free operation similar to that in centralized control is performed. Even if the optimal Post-IFS is not estimated, the number of competing STAs and the collision probability are decreased. Computer simulations verify that the proposed method achieves 40% higher system throughput compared to the conventional CSMA/CA for a network with 50 STAs.

In IEEE 802.11 standard, the contention window (CW) sizes are not efficient because it does not consider the system load. There has been several mechanisms to achieve the maximum throughput by the optimal CW. But some parameters such as the number of stations and system utilization are difficult to measure in WLAN systems. To solve this problem, we use the network allocation vector (NAV) which represents the transmission of other stations. This parameter can be used to measure the system load. Thus, the CW sizes can be estimated by the system load. In this paper, we derive the analytical model for the optimal CW sizes and the maximum throughput using the NAV and show the relationships between the CW sizes, the throughput and the NAV.

In this paper, a priority control problem between uplink and downlink flows in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs is considered. The minimum contention window size (CWmin) has a nonnegative integer value. CWmin control scheme is one of the solutions for priority control to achieve the fairness between links. However, it has the problem that CWmin control scheme cannot achieve precise priority control when the CWmin values become small. As the solution of this problem, this paper proposes a new CWmin control method called a virtual continuous CWmin control (VCCC) scheme. The key concept of this method is that it involves the use of small and large CWmin values probabilistically. The proposed scheme realizes the expected value of CWmin as a nonnegative real number and solves the precise priority control problem. Moreover, we proposed a theoretical analysis model for the proposed VCCC scheme. Computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the throughput performance and achieves fairness between the uplink and the downlink flows in an infrastructure mode of the IEEE 802.11 based wireless LAN. Throughput of the proposed scheme is 31% higher than that of a conventional scheme when the number of wireless stations is 18. The difference between the theoretical analysis results and computer simulation results of the throughput is within 1% when the number of STAs is less than 10.

As a promising wireless access standard for machine-to-machine (M2M) networks, the IEEE 802.11 task group ah has been discussing a new standard which is based on the wireless local area network (WLAN) standard. This new standard will support an enormous number of stations (STAs) such as 6,000 STAs. To mitigate degradation of the throughput and delay performance in WLANs that employ a carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol, this paper proposes a virtual grouping method which exploits the random arbitration interframe space number scheme. This method complies with the CSMA/CA protocol, which employs distributed medium access control. Moreover, power saving is another important issue for M2M networks, where most STAs are operated by primary or secondary batteries. This paper proposes a new power saving method for the IEEE 802.11ah based M2M network employing the proposed virtual grouping method. With the proposed virtual grouping and power saving methods, the STAs can save their power by as much as 90% and maintain good throughput and delay performance.

To enhance the throughput while satisfying the quality of service (QoS) requirements of wireless local area networks (WLANs), this paper proposes a distributed coordination function-based (DCF-based) medium access control (MAC) protocol that realizes centralized radio resource management (RRM) for a basic service set. In the proposed protocol, an access point (AP) acts as a master to organize the associated stations and attempts to reserve the radio resource in a conventional DCF-manner. Once the radio resource is successfully reserved, the AP controls the access of each station by an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) scheme. Because the AP assigns radio resources to the stations through the opportunistic two-dimensional scheduling based on the QoS requirements and the channel condition of each station, the transmission opportunities can be granted to the appropriate stations. In order to reduce the signaling overhead caused by centralized RRM, the proposed protocol introduces a station-grouping scheme which groups the associated stations into clusters. Moreover, this paper proposes a heuristic resource allocation algorithm designed for the DCF-based MAC protocol. Numerical results confirm that the proposed protocol enhances the throughput of WLANs while satisfying the QoS requirements with high probability.

IEEE802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are becoming more and more pervasive due to their simple channel access mechanism, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA), but this mechanism provides all nodes including Access Point and other Stations with the same channel access probability. This characteristic does not suit the infrastructure mode which has so many downlink flows to be transmitted at the Access Point that congestion at the Access Point is more likely to occur. To resolve this asymmetry traffic problem, we develop an Optimal Contention Window Adjustment method assuming the condition of erroneous channels over WLANs. This method can be easily implemented and is compatible with the original CSMA/CA mechanism. It holds the ratio of downlink and uplink flows and at the same time achieves the maximum saturation throughput in the WLANs. We use the Markov Chain analytical model to analyze its performance and validate it through the simulations.

As a flexible and cost-efficient scalable Internet access network, we studied architectures, protocols, and design optimizations of the Wireless Internet-access Mesh NETwork (WIMNET). WIMNET is composed of multiple access points (APs) connected through multihop wireless communications on IEEE 802.11 standards. The increasing popularity of real-time applications such as IP-phones and IP-TV means that they should be supported in WIMNET. However, the contention resolution mechanism using a random backoff-time in the CSMA/CA protocol of 802.11 standards is not sufficient for handling real-time traffic in multihop wireless communications. In this paper, we propose a Fixed Backoff-time Switching (FBS) method for the CSMA/CA protocol to improve the real-time traffic performance in WIMNET by giving the necessary activation chances to each link. We implement our proposal on the QualNet simulator, and verify its effectiveness through simulations on three network topologies with four scenarios.

The IEEE 802.11 distributed coordinated function (DCF) adopts carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) as its medium access control (MAC) protocol. CSMA/CA is designed such that the transmission from any one station does not have priority over any other. In a congested environment with many DCF stations, this design makes it difficult to protect channel resources for certain stations such as when products are used for presentation at exhibitions, which should be protected based on priority. On the other hand, The IEEE 802.11 enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) provides a quality-of-service (QoS) mechanism for DCF. However in EDCA, transmission opportunities are allocated based on not individual stations but on the defined traffic type of applications. This paper proposes a distributed dynamic resource allocation method that enables control of flexible bandwidth allocation to each specific station. The proposed method controls the priority level and can coexist with conventional CSMA/CA. Moreover, the proposed method improves the system throughput. Specifically, under the coexistence environment with DCF stations, the proposed method is able to obtain up to over 300% higher user throughput characteristic compared to the case in which the proposed method is not introduced. In addition, under non-coexistence environment, all the proposed stations achieve 70% higher throughput than DCF stations when the number of stations in a network is 50.