Dual Wi-Fi: Dual Channel Wi-Fi for Congested WLANs with Asymmetric Traffic Loads

In many WLANs scenarios, the load transmitted from the AP to the clients (Downlink), far outweighs traffic demand from the clients to the AP (Uplink), thereby yielding traffic asymmetry. Moreover, when many clients associate with a single AP, the clients can cause a disproportional amount of medium contention compared to the AP, producing contention asymmetry. We present Dual Wi-Fi, a MAC architecture and protocol that minimizes MAC overhead by matching spectrum resources to traffic asymmetry. Dual Wi-Fi separates uplink and downlink data traffic into two variable-width independent channels, each allocated in accordance to the network's traffic demand. Our experimental and simulation results demonstrate that Dual Wi-Fi matches downlink vs. uplink throughput ratio to demand ratio within 1\% under any client density and traffic load. Through this matching capability, Dual Wi-Fi offers unbounded downlink gains as congestion increases, minimizing and in some cases eliminating retransmissions and contention time.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Engineering

Grantor

Rice University

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Flores Miranda, Adriana

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Knightly, Edward W.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Sabharwal, Ashutosh
• Zhong, Lin

• Traffic Asymmetry
• IEEE 802.11
• Wireless local area networks
• Hotspot
• Medium access control (MAC)
• Multi-channel random access
• Spectrum efficiency

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1911/78579

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.rice.edu:1911/78579