A Protocol-Independent Approach for Analyzing the Optimal Operation Point of CSMA/CA Protocols

Abstract—This paper presents a protocol-independent approach to reveal a new insight into the performance of carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocols: the family of CSMA/CA protocols, independent of implementation details, share the same optimal operation point where the maximum protocol capacity is achieved. The protocolindependent analysis is inspired by the concept of virtual time slot. At the timescale of virtual-slot, all the CSMA/CA protocols show the same behavior pattern and, therefore, a generic virtualslot based S-G (VS S-G) analysis is developed to compute the optimal operation point. The accuracy of the VS S-G analysis is benchmarked against the precise protocol-specific analysis, in particular, for the 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) and the 802.15.4 contention access period (CAP). Furthermore, this paper discusses how to integrate the network-layer queueing analysis with the VS S-G analysis at the medium access control (...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Yu Cheng, Xinhua Ling, Weihua Zhuang
• Keywords: Carrier Sense Multiple Access With Collision Avoidance, Communications, INFOCOM 2009, Optimal Operation Point, VS S-G Analysis