A complete and accurate analytical model for 802.11e EDCA under saturation conditions

Abstract

Extensive research addressing IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) and 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) performance analysis, by means of analytical models, exists in the literature. It started mainly with the famous Bianchi's model and still continues today as several aspects have not been yet covered. Indeed, the ultimate goal is to obtain the model that provides the most accurate prediction of the performance metrics such as throughputs and delays. Unfortunately, the currently proposed models, even if there are numerous, do not reach this accuracy and are still not sufficiently complete, in the sense that they omit some important EDCA features. In this paper, we propose a complete analytical model for EDCA under saturation conditions. Based on the proposed model, saturated throughput and access delay of each EDCA Access category are given. Simulation is also performed to demonstrate that the proposed model has better accuracy than others.