Analysis of Delay Properties and Admission Control in 802.11 Networks

The ubiquitous use of 802.11 wireless networks highlights the importance of understanding the performance of the 802.11 protocol, specifically its delay properties which is the key to sustaining delay sensitive applications over such networks. In this paper, analytical expressions are derived for the channel access delay distribution of 802.11 networks. An implicit admission control scheme is proposed that uses the channel service time distribution as input to determine the maximum number of users that can be admitted. The analytical expressions for the delay are shown to closely match simulation results. We analyze the performance of the admission control scheme and calculate the saturation throughput for the admitted user. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the admission control scheme and the analytical results.