An Improved EDCAF for Multirate Cross-layer Design in Wireless Networks

Abstract

IEEE 802.11e provides the guaranteed quality of service (QoS) by providing different transmission priorities. IEEE 802.11e improves the media access control layer of IEEE 802.11 to satisfy the different QoS requirements by introducing two channel access functions: the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) and the HCF controlled channel access (HCCA). This paper proposes an improved EDCAF (IEDCAF) by combining the cross-layer concept and IEEE 802.11e EDCAF protocol; a multirate discrete Markov chain model is analyzed for the system with multiple transmission rates. According to the obtained results, IEDCAF improves performance especially in throughput and fairness. IEDCAF also makes the different QoS requirements be processed efficiently and flexibly