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An Enhanced A-MSDU Frame Aggregation Scheme for 802.11n Wireless Networks

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Abstract

The main goal of the IEEE 802.11n standard is to achieve a minimum throughput of 100 Mbps at the MAC service access point. This high throughput has been achieved via many enhancements in both the physical and MAC layers. A key enhancement at the MAC layer is frame aggregation in which the timing and headers overheads of the legacy MAC are reduced by aggregating multiple frames into a single large frame before being transmitted. Two aggregation schemes have been defined by the 802.11n standard, aggregate MAC service data unit (A-MSDU) and aggregate MAC protocol data unit (A-MPDU). As a consequence of the aggregation, new aggregation headers are introduced and become parts of the transmitted frame. Even though these headers are small compared to the legacy headers they still have a negative impact on the network performance, especially when aggregating frames of small payload. Moreover, the A-MSDU is highly influenced by the channel condition due mainly to lack of subframes sequence control and retransmission. In this paper, we have proposed an aggregation scheme (mA-MSDU) that reduces the aggregation headers and implements a retransmission control over the individual subframes at the MSDU level. The analysis and simulations results show the significance of the proposed scheme, specifically for applications that have a small frame size such as VoIP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Technology and Network, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, UPM, Serdang, Selangor D.E., Malaysia

    Anwar Saif, Mohamed Othman, Shamala Subramaniam & Nor Asila Wati Abdul Hamid

Authors
  1. Anwar Saif
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  2. Mohamed Othman
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  3. Shamala Subramaniam
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  4. Nor Asila Wati Abdul Hamid
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Correspondence to Anwar Saif.

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Saif, A., Othman, M., Subramaniam, S. et al. An Enhanced A-MSDU Frame Aggregation Scheme for 802.11n Wireless Networks. Wireless Pers Commun 66, 683–706 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-011-0358-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-011-0358-8

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