A Fair Transmission Opportunity by Detecting and Punishing the Malicious Wireless Stations in IEEE 802.11e EDCA Network

Abstract

We propose a malicious detection algorithm that permits identification of misbehaving wireless stations, and then dispenses punishment by denying an ACK packet which allows transmission by the malicious stations. The proposed algorithm is designed for an IEEE 802.11e network and is based upon detecting a change in quality of service (QoS) where a station is moved up in terms of permission to a level not justified. Non-detection causes honest stations to increase their retransmit attempts, exceeding the specified deadline in order to sustain continuous receipt of their data. Even with the coexistence of such malicious stations, our algorithm guarantees the lower bound of performance degradation to the honest stations. Also, the punished period imposed upon the malicious stations compensates the experienced degradation in QoS for the honest stations in the next transmission period. As a result, we provide fair resource sharing among the stations operating from the same access point. Our simulation within the ns-2 framework of the IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access network shows how our algorithm actually detects and adjusts the punishment phase for stations that may be misbehaving as well as stations which are misbehaving.