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.

Channel state estimation-based backoff algorithms for channel access are being widely studied to solve wireless channel accessing and sharing problem especially in super dense wireless networks. In such algorithms, the precision of the channel state estimation determines the performance. How to make the estimation accurate in an efficient way to meet the system requirements is essential in designing the new channel access algorithms. In this paper, we first study the distribution and properties of inaccurate estimations using a novel biased estimation analysis model. We then propose an efficient backoff algorithm based on the theory of confidence interval estimation (BA-CIE), in which the minimum sample size is deduced to improve the contention window tuning efficiency, while a fault-tolerance interval structure is applied to reduce the inaccurate estimations so as to improve the contention window tuning accuracy. Our simulation results show that the throughput of our proposed BA-CIE algorithm can achieve 99% the theoretical maximum throughput of IEEE 802.11 networks, thanks to the improved contention window tuning performance.

The medium access control (MAC) protocol is the main determiner of the system throughput in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). The MAC technique of the IEEE 802.11 protocol is called Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). DCF is based on a carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) scheme with binary slotted exponential backoff. Each station generates a random backoff interval before transmitting a packet to minimize the probability of collision with packets being transmitted by other stations. However, when the number of stations increases, the system throughput decreases. This paper proposes a new backoff algorithm that uses finish tags. The proposed algorithm uses the finish tag of each station to control the backoff intervals so as to improve system throughput. The finish tag is updated when a packet reaches the front of its flow, and it is attached to the packet just prior to transmission. When a station receives packets with older finish tags, its backoff time interval is increased. For this reason, the more the stations there are, the larger the backoff time becomes. Simulations confirm that the proposal improves system throughput of a IEEE 802.11 network under saturation conditions.

The IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) provides a contention-based distribution channel access mechanism for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of the DCF drops dramatically in terms of throughput, delay and jitter as the number of active stations becomes large. In this paper, we propose a simple and effective scheme, called distributed coordination function with virtual group (DCF/VG), for improving the performance of the IEEE 802.11 DCF mechanism. In this scheme, each station independently decides a virtual group cycle taking into account the current contention level. The virtual group cycle consists of one or more virtual groups and a virtual group includes an idle and a busy period. Each station chooses one virtual group and operates only in the chosen group of the cycle. In other words, each station decreases its backoff counter and tries to transmit its packet during the period of the chosen virtual group like in the IEEE 802.11 DCF. Performance of the proposed scheme is investigated by numerical analysis and simulation. Our results show that the proposed scheme is very effective and has high throughput and low delay and jitter behaviors under a wide range of contention levels.

Most of analytical models proposed so far for the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) focus on saturation performance. In this paper, we develop an analytic model for unsaturation performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.11 DCF with and without slow contention window decrease (SCWD). The model explicitly takes into account the carrier sensing mechanism and an additional backoff interval after successful frame transmission, both of which can be ignored under saturation conditions. Expressions are derived for throughput and delay characteristics by means of the equilibrium point analysis. The accuracy of our model is validated through computer simulation. Numerical results based on the IEEE 802.11b with CCK show that the SCWD can stably achieve approximately 20% performance gain over the normal 802.11 DCF under unsaturation conditions as well as saturation ones.

We analytically investigate combinatorial effects of timer control and backoff algorithms on performance of bulk data transfer over two-state Markovian packet error channels. Numerical results for throughput, energy efficiency, and the probabilities of packet loss and loss of bulk data indicate that linear backoff algorithms outperform binary exponential ones as a whole when they are employed at the logical link sublayer with timer control.

The IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards adopt CSMA/CA protocol with a backoff algorithm as medium access control technique. When the number of stations which attempt to access a network increases, the throughput efficiency of the standard goes down. In this paper, we propose a modified backoff algorithm which adaptively selects the Contention Window (CW) size according to the variation of the number of contending stations and present the results of simulation analysis.

In this paper, a contention-based reservation MAC protocol is proposed for non-real-time burst traffic class in wireless ATM networks. The proposed protocol is characterized by the contention-based transmission of the reservation request and contention-free transmission of burst traffic. The design objective of the proposed protocol is to reduce contention delay during the contention phase of a connection. In order to reduce collision of reservation requests, the base station calculates the transmission probability based on the estimated load of reservation requests and the number of random access minislots, and broadcasts it over the frame header period of downlink channel. Wireless terminal, which has traffic burst, selects a random access minislot and transmits its reservation request with a received transmission probability. Based on the successfully received reservation, the scheduler allocates the uplink data slots to wireless terminal. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can provide higher channel utilization, and furthermore, maintains constant delay performance in a heavy traffic environment.