Characterizing the effect of packet losses in current WLAN Deployments

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a contemporary short-range technology, IEEE 802.11-2012 a.k.a. WiFi, to enable high-speed wireless communication and thus facilitate ubiquitous Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) connectivity. In particular, we detail our integrated simulation-analytical framework to characterize full-buffer WLAN deployments revealing the impact of many important performance factors, such as user density, radio channel properties, access protocol settings, and others. By contrast to existing saturated models typically applying Markov chains, our approach is based on regenerative analysis and thus remains scalable even when the number of parameters of interest is large. We specifically emphasize that a user might wish to limit the number of attempts to transmit a single packet and discard packets if the maximum number of retransmissions is reached. Accounting for packet losses, we arrive at a new analytical model, extending the previous models, and verify it with extensive simulations of the current IEEE 802.11-2012 protocol.