Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF and IEEE 802.11e EDCA in non-saturation condition

Abstract

We analyze the MAC performance of the IEEE 802.11 DCF and 802.11e EDCA in non-saturation condition where device does not have packets to transmit sometimes. We assume that a flow is not generated while the previous flow is in service and the number of packets in a flow is geometrically distributed. In this paper, we take into account the feature of non-saturation condition in standards: possibility of transmission performed without preceding backoff procedure for the first packet arriving at the idle station. Our approach is to model a stochastic behavior of one station as a discrete time Markov chain. We obtain four performance measures: normalized channel throughput, average packet HoL (head of line) delay, expected time to complete transmission of a flow and packet loss probability. Our results can be used for admission control to find the optimal number of stations with some constraints on these measures.