Elsevier

Computer Communications

Volume 23, Issue 10, 1 May 2000, Pages 998-1013
Computer Communications

Analyzing the hidden-terminal effects and multimedia support for wireless LAN

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-3664(99)00216-9Get rights and content

Abstract

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) are expected to be a major growth factor for communication networks in the upcoming years. They are expected to provide a transparent connection for mobile hosts to communicate with other mobile hosts, and wired hosts on the wired LAN and broadband networks. Recently there have been two WLAN projects, which are undergoing standardization process: the IEEE 802.11 and the ETSI HIPERLAN. Most of the existing study of the two MAC protocols focused on simulation results, and none of them has formally analyzed the hidden-terminal effect, which is both crucial and unavoidable in wireless/mobile environment. In the first part of this paper, we formally analyze the hidden-terminal effect on HIPERLAN. Through mathematical analysis, we formulate network throughput under hidden-terminal influence in terms of the original (clear-channel) throughput, hidden-terminal probability, and other protocol parameters. We show that when hidden probability is greater than zero, the achievable throughput is reduced by more than the percentage of hidden probability.

In the second part of the paper, we evaluate and compare the two WLAN MAC protocols by simulation on the effect of hidden terminals on: (1) network throughput; (2) real-time voice delay; and (3) number of voice and data stations supported while guaranteeing delay for voice. We also evaluate how well the two MAC protocols support real-time traffic while considering the effects of frame size and other network parameters, and measure: (1) the distribution of voice delay; (2) number of voice and data stations supported while guaranteeing their quality of service. We found that, comparing with IEEE 802.11, HIPERLAN provides real-time packet voice traffic with shorter delay, and at the same time provides the non-real-time packet data with higher bandwidth.

We believe that the formal analysis presented in this work would provide a significant reference for wireless/mobile network community; the comparison study of the two MAC protocols would also aid the future enhancement of WLAN MAC protocols.

Introduction

In recent years, there has been an increasing trend towards personal computers becoming “portable” and “mobile”. In order to offer broadband communication services and to provide universal connectivity to mobile users, it is important that a suitable standard for wireless local area networks (WLAN) be designed, and an approach to interconnect these WLANs to the existing wired local area networks (LANs) and broadband networks be developed.

To satisfy the above needs of wireless data networking, Study Group 802.11 was formed under IEEE Project 802 to recommend an international standard for wireless LAN [9]. The key objectives include: (1) A WLAN should appear at the logical link control layer (LLC) as just another 802.xLAN (e.g. Ethernet and token ring); (2) the response time should not be so large that the productivity of end users is compromised.

Meanwhile in Europe, ETSI (Europe Telecommunication Standardization Institute) also formed a group called HIPERLAN to study a standard for WLAN, which is different from what IEEE was doing. The HIPERLAN is targeted to a more ambitious goal to support much higher bandwidth than IEEE 802.11 LAN [14].

There has been several works reported in the literature about the performance of IEEE 802.11 and the HIPERLAN [1], [2], [5], [17], [6], [7], [13], [14]. Most of them were on the simulation study. Some of them include analysis of capacity [2] and stability [1]. None of them, however, had a detailed analysis of hidden-terminal effect. Hidden-terminal problem occur when two stations are within the receiving area of each other, yet they cannot hear each other due to signaling loss, interference, multi-path effect, or relay fading. Hidden terminal is a significant problem in wireless and mobile communications.

In this paper, we first give a formal analysis of hidden-terminal effect of HIPERLAN. We derive network throughput under the influence of hidden terminals, and show that throughput is reduced by more than the percentage of hidden probability. We believe that this is the first work in the literature that provides a formal analysis of hidden-terminal effect of WLAN.

In the second part of this paper, we present results of a rigorous set of simulation experiments comparing the two WLAN protocols. These include the following: (1) evaluation of hidden-terminal effects, partly to verify the analysis result; (2) performance study of real-time traffic supports. Both sets take into consideration of various parameters include frame length, traffic load, and measure network throughput, voice delay distribution, and bandwidth left for data traffic.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 1.1 gives a survey of related work. Section 2 presents an overview of the two WLAN protocols. The analysis of HIPERLAN is presented in Section 3. Section 4 describes the simulation model and settings. 5 Simulation results on hidden terminal effect, 6 Simulation results on real-time communication support study and compare the two protocols, by simulation, on their hidden-terminal effects and real-time traffic supports, respectively. Finally, Section 7 concludes the paper.

On the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, Chhaya and Gupta conducted performance study of the basic and RTS/CTS schemes, taking into account the decentralized nature of communications, and hidden-terminal effects [5], [17]. Crow et al. [6], [7] investigated through simulations, the DCF and PCF functions of the IEEE 802.11 MAC, in supporting of both time-sensitive packet voice and non-real-time packet data traffic. Cali et al. [2] analyzed the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol capacity, and suggested a protocol enhancement by properly tuning the backoff algorithm.

On the HIPERLAN MAC protocol, Wilkinson et al. [14] reviewed the process of ETSI RES10 on standardizing the protocol. Anastasi et al. [1] formally analyze the stability and performance of HIPERLAN [1]. Nenonen and Mikkonen [16] compared the performance of HIPERLAN and the Modified MDR by simulation. Weinmiller [13] evaluated the performance of HIPERLAN and IEEE 802.11 by varying station number and packet size.

All of the above studies, except [1], [2], focused on simulation study. There has been no formal analysis of hidden terminal effect on either of the two protocols appeared in the literature. Moreover, none of the simulation study of HIPERLAN has explicitly showed the delay distribution of voice packets, or the data throughput achievable in the integrated service of voice and data communication. These and related results are reported in this work.

Section snippets

IEEE 802.11 protocol description

The IEEE 802.11 committee has been working on the establishment of a standard for wireless LANs. A detailed description of specifications on different layers was presented in [9]. The standard is concentrated on multiple physical layers, and the common medium access control sub-layer.

Analysis of hidden-terminal effect

In this section, we first formally derive network throughput of HIPERLAN when hidden probability is non-zero. Hidden-terminal effect of IEEE 802.11, including both basic and RTS/CTS scheme, are then discussed.

Settings and assumptions for IEEE 802.11

In our simulation, we accepted the parameter values and some assumptions used in Ref. [3]. Two different simulation models are presented. One is ad hoc network that offers only asynchronous data transmission service, and the other is an infrastructure network that offers time-bounded services. Both simulation models are implemented using the physical layer parameters specified in the standard for the DSSS (Direct sequence spread spectrum) implementation. To simplify the complexity of simulation

Simulation results on hidden terminal effect

We evaluate the hidden terminal effect on (A) throughput using basic scheme, (B) when varying frame size, only basic scheme, and (C) RTS/CTS.

Simulation of IEEE 802.11

We evaluate how well the MAC protocol can support real-time (mainly voice) communication, considering (A) effect of payload size, (B) effect of K, (C) number of stations supported, and (D) bandwidth left for data traffic.

(A) Effect of payload size

In Fig. 14, we see that over 99% of the voice packets’ delays are within 500 ms when payload size is equal 100bytes or above. For payload is 50 bytes, over 2% of packets have a delay longer than 500 ms, i.e., these packets do not meet the timing

Conclusion

We have formally analyzed the hidden-terminal effect on HIPERLAN, and have studied and compared two WLAN MAC protocols: IEEE 802.11 and HIPERLAN, including the effect of hidden-terminal and their support of real-time traffic. We explicitly formulated network throughput in terms of hidden probability and other network parameters. We found that, when hidden probability is greater than zero, the achievable throughput is reduced by more than the percentage of hidden probability.

By simulation, we

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Supported in part by NSF (grant NCR-9714700), 3Com Technology Development Center, and Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space; currently on sabbatical leave visiting 3Com TCD.

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