Publication

Models of 802.11 Multi-Hop Networks: Theoretical Insights and Experimental Validation

Abstract

Wireless Multi-Hop CSMA/CA Networks are challenging to analyze. On the one hand, their dynamics are complex and rather subtle effects may severely affect their performance. Yet, understanding these effects is critical to operate upper layer protocols, such as TCP/IP. On the other hand, their models tend to be very complex in order to reproduce all the features of the protocol. As a result, they do not convey much insight into the essential features. We review two models of 802.11 protocols, which are simple enough to first explain why a trade-off needs to be found between fairness and spatial reuse (throughput) in saturated wireless networks (where all nodes have packets to transmit to their neighbors); and then to explain why non-saturated networks (where only some nodes, the sources, have packets to transmit to their destinations in a multi-hop fashion) that are more than 3 hops longs suffer from instability. We confront both models either to realistic simulations in ns-2 or to experiments with a testbed deployed at EPFL. We find that the predictions of both models help us understand the performance of the 802.11 protocol, and provide hints about the changes that need to be brought to the protocol.

About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.