Throughput Differentiation and Optimization Via TXOP in IEEE 802.11e EDCA Networks

The Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) has been proposed as the mandatory channel access method in IEEE 802.11e to provide Quality-of-Service enhancement. Transmission Opportunity (TXOP) is adopted in the EDCA as one of the service differentiation mechanisms. With the TXOP mechanism, nodes in each Access Category (AC) are allowed to transmit multiple packets for different time intervals after gaining the channel access. Throughput differentiation can then be realized among ACs. The effect of the TXOP mechanism on the performance differentiation was widely studied in previous work. Despite these efforts, it remains largely unknown how the TXOP mechanism affects the optimal network performance. This paper is devoted to study how to achieve the maximum network throughput with the service differentiation requirement via the TXOP mechanism in a saturated IEEE 802.11e EDCA network. In particular, the expressions of both the node throughput and the network throughput are derived as functions of system parameters including the TXOP value in each AC. The node-throughput ratio is determined by TXOP values, which validates that the TXOP mechanism is effective in providing throughput differentiation. The explicit expression of the maximum throughput is further derived, and is found to be determined by the TXOP mechanism and the service differentiation requirement of each AC. To achieve the maximum throughput, the initial backoff window size of each AC should be adaptively chosen according to the TXOP values, the targeted node-throughput ratios as well as the number of nodes in each AC.