Performance analysis of WiFi networks based on sporadic traffic model using NS3

Abstract

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are widely used nowadays due to their high data rate and cheap cost. The unpredictable exponential demand of wireless devices such as phones, digital devices and internet of thing (IoT) sensors leads to a huge demand on Wi-Fi access. WLANs experience many challenges in the design and implementation due to their popularity and the large demand. One of these challenges is the effect of the interactive multimedia traffic on the performance of the WLANs. We investigated the impact of sporadic traffic on the behaviour of WLANs using NS3. The main WLANs performance metrics were analyzed using two different types of traffic distributions based on the N-burst analytical traffic model. The results show the negative impact of heavy-tailed applications on the performance WLANs. Also the results show that the effect of heavy-tailed application is less significant in high utilised networks.