A SURVEY OF QOS TECHNIQUES IN 802.

11
Drabu, Yasir
Department of Computer Science, Kent State University

Contents
1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Background
3.1. 802.11 Mac Sub layer
3.2. Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)
3.3. Virtual Carrier Sense
3.4. Point Coordination Function
3.5. Fragmentation
4. QoS Techniques in 802.11
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Classification of service differentiation techniques
4.2.1. Differentiated services based on DCF
4.2.1.1. Backoff Increase Function or Distributed Fair Scheduling
4.2.1.2. Varying DIFS
4.2.1.3. Maximum Frame Length
4.2.1.4. Extended DCF
4.2.1.5. Blackburst
4.2.2. Differentiated services based on PCF
4.2.2.1. Hybrid Coordination Function
4.2.2.2. Distributed TDM
5. Conclusion
6. Future Work
7. References
1. ABSTRACT
Currently lot of work is being done to provide service differentiation in the Internet.
However, in wireless environments where bandwidth is scarce and channel conditions
are variable, IP differentiated services are sub-optimal without lower layers’ support. This
paper discusses the 802.11 MAC layer and provides a survey of the different techniques
used for differentiation of service.

2. INTRODUCTION
The most important functions of the MAC layer for a wireless network include controlling
channel access, maintaining Quality of Service (QoS),and providing security. Wireless
links have characteristics that differ from those of fixed links, such as high packet loss
rate, bursts of packet loss, packet re-ordering, and large packet delay and packet delay
variation. Furthermore, the wireless link characteristics are not constant and may vary in
time and place. The mobility of users poses additional requirements, as the end-to-end
path may be changed when users change their point of attachment. Users expect to
receive the same QoS after they have changed their point of attachment. This implies
that the new end-to-end path should also support the existing QoS (i.e., a reservation on
the new path may be required),and problems arise when the new path cannot support
the required.

In section 3 we discuss the 802.11 protocol and how it transports data under different
scenarios. In section 4 we will survey the different service differentiation techniques that
have been considered to work with 802.11.

3. 802.11 MAC SUB LAYER

3.1 Introduction
The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol provides two service types: asynchronous and
synchronous (or contention free). These types of services can be provided on top of a
variety of physical layers and for different data rates. The asynchronous type of service
is always available whereas the contention free is optional. The asynchronous type of
service is provided by the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) which implements
the basic access method of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol and is also known as the
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. The
contention free service is provided by the Point Co-ordination Function (PCF) which
basically implements a “polling” access method. The PCF uses a Point Coordinator,
usually the Access Point, which cyclically polls stations giving them the opportunity to
transmit. Unlike the DCF, the implementation of the PCF is not mandatory. Further more,
the PCF itself relies on the asynchronous service provided by the DCF.
Used for Contention free
transmission
Used for Contention services
Point Coordination and basis for PCF .
Function (PCF)
MAC
Sub layer Distributed Coordination Function
Extent (DCF)

Figure 1: MAC Architecture of 802.11

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 2

3.2 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)
According to the DCF
(see figure 2) a
station must sense
the medium before
initiating the
transmission of a
packet. If the medium
is sensed as being
idle for a time interval
greater than a
Distributed
InterFrame Space
(DIFS) then the
station transmits the
packets. Otherwise, Figure 2: Basic Access Scheme
the transmission is
deferred and the backoff process is started. Specifically, the station computes a random
time interval, the backoff interval, uniformly distributed between zero and maximum
called Contention Window (CW). This back-off interval is then used to initialize the
backoff timer. This timer is decreased only when the medium is idle, whereas it is frozen
when another station is transmitting. Specifically, each time the medium becomes idle,
the station waits for a DIFS and then periodically decrements the backoff timer. The
decrement period is referred to as the slot-time which corresponds to the maximum
round-trip delay within the BSS and, hence, depends on the maximum BSS coverage.
As soon as the backoff timer expires, the station is authorized to access the medium.
Obviously, a collision occurs if two or more stations start transmission simultaneously.
Unlike wired networks (e.g., with CSMA/CD), in a wireless environment collision
detection is not possible. Hence, as shown in figure 2, a positive acknowledgement is
used to notify the sending station that the transmitted frame has been successfully
received. The transmission of the acknowledgement is initiated at a time interval equal to
the Short InterFrame Space (SIFS) after the end of the reception of the previous frame.
Since the SIFS is, by definition, less than the DIFS 1 the receiving station does not need
to sense the medium before transmitting the acknowledgement. If the acknowledgement
is not received the station assumes that the transmitted frame was not successfully
received and, hence, schedules a retransmission and enters the backoff process again.
However, to reduce the probability of collisions, after each unsuccessful transmission
attempt, the Contention Window is doubled until a predefined maximum (CWmax) is
reached. After a (successful or unsuccessful) frame transmission, if the station still has
frames queued for transmission, it must execute a new backoff process.

3.3 Virtual Carrier Sense

In radio systems based on medium sensing, a phenomenon known as the hidden station
problem may occur. This problem arises when a station is able to successfully receive
frames from two different transmitters but the two transmitters cannot receive signals
from each other. In this case a transmitter may sense the medium as being idle even if
the other one is transmitting. This results in a collision at the receiving station.

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 3

To solve the hidden
terminal problem, an
optional RTS/CTS
(Request To Send and
Clear To Send
respectively) scheme
is used in addition to
the previous basic
scheme, as shown in
Figure. 3: a station
sends an RTS before
each frame
transmission to
reserve the channel. Figure 3: RTS-CTS-DATA-ACK Access Scheme
Note that a collision of
RTS frames (20 octets) is less severe and less probable than a collision of data frames
(up to 2346 octets). The destination replies with a CTS if it is ready to receive and the
channel is reserved for the packet duration. When the source receives the CTS, it starts
transmit-ting its frame, being sure that the channel is reserved for itself during all the
frame duration. All other STAs in the BSS update their Network Allocation Vector (NAV)
whenever they hear an RTS, a CTS or a data frame. NAV is used for virtual carrier
sensing, as detailed in the next paragraph. The overhead of sending RTS/CTS frames
becomes considerable when data frames sizes are small, and the channel is sub-
optimally used. Very large frames may reduce trans-mission reliability too. e.g. an
uncorrectable error in a large frame wastes more bandwidth and transmission time than
an error in a shorter frame. So another optimization parameter is used, which is
fragmentation threshold, above which packets are fragmented. Not all packet types have
the same priority. For example, ACK packets should have priority over RTS or data
frames. This is done by assigning to each packet type a different Inter Frame Spacing
(IFS), after the channel turns idle, during which a packet cannot be transmitted. In DCF
two IFSs are used: Short IFS (SIFS) and DCF IFS (DIFS), where SIFS is shorter than
DIFS (See Fig. 1 and 2). As a result, if an ACK (assigned with SIFS) and a new data
packet (assigned with DIFS) are waiting simultaneously for the channel to become idle,
the ACK will be transmitted before the new data packet (the first has to wait SIFS
whereas the data has to wait DIFS).

Carrier sensing can be performed on both physical and MAC layers. On the physical
layer, physical carrier sensing is done by sensing any channel activity caused by other
sources. On the MAC sub-layer, virtual carrier sensing can be done by updating a local
NAV with the value of other terminals’ transmission duration. This duration is declared in
data, RTS and CTS frames. Using the NAV, a STA’s MAC knows when the current
transmission ends. NAV is updated upon hearing an RTS from the sender and/or a CTS
from the receiver, so the hidden node problem is avoided. The collision avoidance part
of CSMA/CA consists of avoiding packet transmission right after the channel is sensed
idle for DIFS time, so it does not collide with other “waiting” packets. Instead, a WT with
a packet ready to be transmitted waits the channel to become idle for DIFS time, then it
waits for an additional random time, backoff time, after which the packet is transmitted,
as shown in Figure. 2 and 3. Collision avoidance is applied on data packets in the basic
scheme, and on RTS packets in the RTS/CTS scheme. The backoff time of each STA is

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 4

decreased as long as the channel is idle (during the so called contention window). When
the channel is busy, backoff time is frozen. When backoff time reaches zero, the WT
transmits its frame. If the packet collides with another frame (or RTS), the WT times out
waiting for the ACK (or the CTS) and computes a new random backoff time with a higher
range to retransmit the packet with lower collision probability. This range increases
exponentially as where (initially equal to 1) is the transmission attempt number.
Therefore, the backoff time equation is:

where Slot_time is a function of the physical layer and rand() is a random function with a
uniform distribution in [0,1].

3.3 Point Coordination Function (PCF)

Time-bounded
data such as
Super frame Delay
voice and video is
supported in the Contention Free Period
Contention Period
802.11 MAC B PCF Busy B PCF
specification DCF DCF
through the Point
Figure 4: PCF and DCF working together
Coordination
Function (PCF). As opposed to the DCF, where control is distributed to all stations, in
PCF mode a single access point controls access to the media. If a BSS is set up with
PCF enabled, time is spliced between the system being in PCF mode and in DCF
(CSMA/CA) mode. During the periods when the system is in PCF mode, the access
point will poll each station for data, and after a given time move on to the next station.
No station is allowed to transmit unless it is polled, and stations receive data from the
access point only when they are polled. Since PCF gives every station a turn to transmit
in a predetermined fashion, a maximum latency is guaranteed. A downside to PCF is
that it is not particularly scalable, in that a single point needs to have control of media
access and must poll all stations, which can be ineffective in large networks.

The PCF is an optional connection-oriented capability. The PCF needs a Point

Coordinator (PC) that initiates and controls the contention-free period(CF) where PCF is
used. The PC first senses the channel for PIFS seconds (priority over regular DFS
traffic) and then starts a CF period by broadcasting a beacon signal. All regular terminals
add CFPmaxduration(the maximum possible duration of the contention free period) to their
NAV. Later, active users with time-bounded packet streams are continuously polled. The
PC can end the contention free period at any time by transmitting a CF-end packet; this
occurs frequently when the network is lightly loaded.

When a terminal's turn in the poll comes, the PC sends a data packet to it (if any such
data is buffered) piggybacked by a poll token or simply a poll token. The receiver sends
back an ACK after SIFS seconds or any buffered data piggibacked with an ACK. Note
that all packets are separated by SIFS seconds, this is why piggibacking is very useful in
this transmission scenario. Priority polling mechanisms can be used if different QOS
levels are requested by different polled users.

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 5

Users who are idle repeatedly are removed from the poll cycle after k idle periods and
polled again at the beginning of the next CF period. k=1 was found to be optimal by
Crow et. al. [8] when all time-bounded data are voice data streams; this is explained by
the fact that relative to the duration of the CF period, voice streams are sent in slow on-
off bursts.

3.5 Fragmentation
The MAC also
supports a concept
called fragmentation
that provides for
flexibility in
transmitter/receiver
design, and can be
useful in environments
with RF interference.
An 802.11 transmitter
can optionally break
messages into smaller
fragments for
sequential Figure 5: Frame Fragmentation in 802.11
transmission. A
receiver can more
reliably receive the shorter date bursts because the shorter duration of each fragment
transmission reduces the chance for errors due to signal fading or noise. Moreover, the
smaller fragments have a better chance of escaping burst interference such as that from
a microwave source. The 802.11 standard mandates that all receivers support
fragmentation but leaves such support optional on transmitters.

Fig. 5 shows how a STA would send a fragmented packet We can see there are no
RTSs between packet fragments, so a given WT keeps sending its packet fragments as
long as it is receiving the corresponding ACKs. Meanwhile, all other STAs are “quiet.”
This leads us to almost the same data rate shares as if there were no fragmentation,
unless there is fragment loss (thus a new RTS), due to a noisy channel for example. In
the case of no fragment loss, both above cases can then be described by the former
one, i.e. limiting packet lengths to a given value.

This technique limits the risk to have to retransmit a package and thus improves overall
the performances of the network without wire. The MAC layer is responsible for the
reconstitution of the received fragments, the processing being thus transparent for the
protocols of higher level.

4. QOS TECHNIQUES IN 802.11

4.1 Introduction
There is more than one way to characterize Quality of Service (QoS). Generally, QoS is
the ability of a network element (e.g. an application, a host or a router) to provide some
level of assurance for consistent network data delivery. Some applications are more
stringent about their QoS requirements than others, and for this reason (among others)
we have two basic types of QoS available:

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 6

 Resource reservation (integrated services): network resources are apportioned
according to an application’s QoS request, and subject to bandwidth
management policy.

Prioritization (differentiated services): network traffic is classified and

apportioned network resources according to bandwidth management policy

criteria. To enable QoS, network elements give preferential treatment to
classifications identified as having more demanding requirements.

These types of QoS can be applied to individual application “flows” or to flow

aggregates, hence there are two other ways to characterize types of QoS:

Per Flow: A “flow” is defined as an individual, uni-directional, data stream

between two applications (sender and receiver), uniquely identified by a 5-tuple

(transport protocol, source address, source port number, destination address,
and destination port number).

Per Aggregate: An aggregate is simply two or more flows. Typically the flows will

have something in common (e.g. any one or more of the 5-tuple parameters, a
label or a priority number, or perhaps some authentication information).

In the next section we classify and discuss some of the techniques that can be
applied to obtain differentiated services in a 802.11 base network.

4.2 Classification Of Service Differentiation Techniques

Differentiation in services can be achieved by modifying the parameters that define how
a STA would access the wireless medium. These can be broadly classified in to DCF
and PCF based techniques. Further classification is done based on the parameter that
is used to achieve service differentiation.

QoS techniques in 802.11

DCF Based Techniques PCF Based Techniques

Backoff Increase Function Varying DIFS Hybrid Coordination Function Distributed TDM

Extended DCF Maximum Frame Length

Blackburst

Fig 5: Classification of QoS techniques in 802.11

4.2.1 Differentiated Services Using DCF

To introduce priorities in the IEEE 802.11 using the DCF (Distributed Coordination
Function), the following techniques were surveyed.

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 7

4.2.1.1 Backoff Increase Function or Distributed Fair Scheduling
In [7] an access scheme called Distributed Fair Scheduling (DFS) which utilizes the
ideas behind fair 1 queuing [2] in the wireless domain is presented. It uses the backoff
mechanism of IEEE 802.11 to determine which station should send first. Before
transmitting a frame, the backoff process is always initiated. The backoff interval
calculated is proportional to the size of the packet to send and inversely proportional to
the weight of the flow. This causes stations with low weights to generate longer backoff
intervals than those with high weights, thus get-ting lower priority. Fairness is achieved
by including the packet size in the calculation of the backoff interval, causing flows with
smaller packets to get to send more often. This gives flows with equal weights the same
bandwidth regardless of the packet sizes used. If a collision occurs, a new backoff
interval is calculated using the backoff algorithm of the IEEE 802.11 standard.

4.2.1.2 Varying DIFS

Apart from
changing the
backoff algorithm,
we can vary the
DIFS for
differentiation. In
IEEE 802.11 ACK
packets get higher
priority than RTS
packets, simply by
waiting SIFS which
is shorter than
DIFS (for RTS).
Figure 6: Introducing Priority using DIFS
Using the same idea
to introduce
priorities for data frames (in the basic scheme) and for RTS frame (in the RTS/CTS
scheme). In this approach each priority level is given a different DIFS, like DIFSl where
DIFSj+1 < DIFSj. So the STAs having priority j will wait DIFSj idle period before
transmitting the packet. To avoid same priority frames collision, the backoff mechanishm
is maintained in a way that the maximum contention window size added to DIFSj is
DIFSj-1 - DIFSj as shown in the Fig 6. This ensures that no STA of priority j+1 has
queued frames when STA of priority j starts transmission. Low priority traffic will suffer as
long as these high priority frames are queued. It could also be the case that the
maximum random range (RRj) after DIFSj can be made greater than DIFSj-1 - DIFSj, so
the previous rule becomes less severe. In this case, a packet which failed to access the
channel at the first attempt will "probably" have its priority reduced after consecutive
attempts, depending on the DIFSs and RRs values. This technique maybe useful for
real-time application, where we have more constraints on delays than on packet drops.

4.2.1.3 Maximum Frame Length

The third mechanism that can be used to introduce service differentiation into IEEE
802.11 is to limit the maximum frame length used by each STAs. Here, we should
distinguish between two possibilities:
Either to drop packets that exceed the maximum frame length assigned to a
given STA (or simply configure it to limit its packet lengths), or

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 8

 To fragment packets that exceed the maximum frame length. As mentioned in
section II, this mechanism is actually used to increase transmission reliability,
we’ll also use it for differentiation.

Figure. 5 shows how a STA would send a fragmented packet. We can see there are no
RTSs between packet fragments, so a given WT keeps sending its packet fragments as
long as it is receiving the corresponding ACKs. Meanwhile, all other STAs are “quiet.”
This leads us to almost the same data rate shares as if there were no fragmentation,
unless there is fragment loss (thus a new RTS), due to a noisy channel for example. In
the case of no fragment loss, both above cases can then be described by the former
one, i.e. limiting packet lengths to a given value.

4.2.1.4 Extended DCF

The contention window is a time window following the transmission of a frame. During
this time window, the various stations on the network contend for access to the network.
But every station can' t just attempt to seize the wire after the completion of the previous
packet transmission. To avoid collisions, the MAC protocol requires that each station first
wait for a randomly-chosen time period. Since this period is chosen at random by each
station, there is less likelihood of collisions between stations.
Extended DCF involves using the contention window as a way to give higher priority to
some stations than to others. Assigning a short contention window to those stations that
should have higher priority ensures that in most (though not all) cases, the higher-priority
stations will be able to transmit ahead of the lower-priority ones.

4.2.1.5 Blackburst
The main goal of Blackburst [2] is to minimize the delay for real-time traffic. Unlike the
other schemes it imposes certain requirements on the high priority stations. Blackburst
requires: 1) all high priority stations try to access the medium with equal, constant
intervals, tsch ; and 2) the ability to jam the medium for a period of time. When a high
priority station wants to send a frame, it senses the medium to see if it has been idle for
a PIFS and then sends its frame. If the medium is busy, the station waits for the medium
to be idle for a PIFS and then enters a black burst contention period. The station now
sends a so called black burst to jam the channel. The length of the black burst is
determined by the time the station has waited to access the medium, and is calculated
as a number of black slots. After transmitting the black burst, the station listens to the
medium for a short period of time (less than a black slot) to see if some other station is
sending a longer black burst which would imply that the other station has waited longer
and thus should access the medium first. If the medium is idle, the station will send its
frame, otherwise it will wait until the medium becomes idle again and enter another black
burst contention period. By using slotted time, and imposing a minimum frame size on
real time frames, it can be guaranteed that each black burst contention period will yield a
unique winner [4]. After the successful transmission of a frame, the station schedules the
next transmission attempt tsch seconds in the future. This has the nice effect that real-
time flows will synchronize, and share the medium in a TDM fashion [4]. This means that
unless some low priority traffic comes and disturbs the order, very little blackbursting will
have to be done once the stations have synchronized.

Low priority stations use the ordinary CSMA/CA access method of IEEE 802.11.

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 9

4.2.2 Differentiated Services Using PCF
Some of the techniques surveyed using the PCF to achieve service
differentiation are discussed below.

4.2.2.1 Hybrid Coordination Function

Hybrid Coordination Function (HCF) uses the wireless access point as a traffic director.
The access point uses a polling technique as the traffic control mechanism. (The AP
sends polling packets to a succession of stations on the network. The individual stations
can reply to the poll with a packet that contains not only the response, but also any data
that needs to be transmitted. But it must first wait to be polled.) Instead of polling in a
round-robin, or any other purely-fair, unweighted basis, the AP would establish a polling
priority based on what the QoS priority should be.

4.2.2.2 Distributed TDM

This mechanism uses polling like regular PCF, but using this technique we can also set
up time division multiplexing (TDM)-like timeslot periods, and specify which station gets
which timeslot. Once the timeslots have been assigned, each station will "know" when it
can transmit, and the packet transmissions can take place with very little intervention
from the AP (in contrast with HCF, where the AP must use its polling capability to direct
the transfer of every frame to be sent).

5. CONCLUSION

This survey presents some of the techniques that can be used to attain differentiated
services in wireless LANs based on the 802.11 protocol. Some of these techniques can
be achieved will little modification to the actual protocol, other are more elaborate to
implement. How well these techniques work with real data is yet to be evaluate.

These techniques are just part of the complete Diffserv architecture and a mapping has
to be established with the different classes of services used in Diffserv. Other issues like
admission control too need to be addressed.

The 802.11e standard is planning to introduce QoS into the 802.11 standard.

6. FUTURE WORK

Firstly these techniques need to be simulated and evaluated for different metrics like
throughput, bandwidth utilization and transmission delays under different load
conditions. Also simulation to evaluate TCP and UDP traffic can be done.
One thing that would be interesting to do in the future is an authentic evaluation of the
mechanisms in a real wireless LAN. Since evaluations based on simulations do not
consider node mobility and roaming between several base stations, these aspects need
to be investigated further.
Another aspect that needs to be studied is admission control. To be able to provide
service differentiation that gives certain guarantees to high priority traffic, it does not
suffice to just have a QoS aware access mechanism. If no admission control is used, it is
very likely that too many users will use the higher priority class. This results in an
overload that can't be handled, thus reducing the performance of high priority stations.

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 10

7. REFERENCES

[1] IEEE 802.11: Wireless LAN medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY)
specifications. IEEE.

[2] D-J. Deng and R-S. Chang. A priority scheme for IEEE 802.11 DCF access method.
IEICE Transactions on Communications, E82-B(1), January 1999.

[3] A. Wolisz F. H.P. Fitzek, "QoS support in wireless networks using Simultaneous MAC
packet transmission (SMPT)", in ATS, April 1999

[4]Imad Aad and Claude Castelluccia, "Differentiation mechanisms for IEEE 802.11",
IEEE Infocom 2001, April 22- 26, 2001

[5] G. Anastasi and L. Lenzini, "QoS provided by the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN to
advanced data applications: a simulation analysis" Page 99-108, ACM, Wireless
Networks, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2000.

[6] H.S. Chhaya and S. Gupta, Performance of asynchronous data transfer methods of
IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol", IEEE Personal Communications 3(5) (October 1996).

[7] D-J. Deng and R-S. Chang. A priority scheme for IEEE 802.11 DCF access method.
IEICE Transactions on Communications, E82-B-(1), January 1999.

[8] Brian P. Crow, Indra Widjaja, Jeong Geun Kim and Prescott Sakai. IEEE 802.11
wireless local area networks. IEEE communication Magazine pages 1160126, Sept.
1997.

[9] HomeRF Wireless Lan , web page. URL: http://homerf.org

A survey of QoS techniques in 802.11 11