Polite Centralized Random Backoff for Seamless Transition to Collision Free Wi-Fi Networks
J. D. Kim, David I. Laurenson, John Thompson · 2019
Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) using the standard Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) have widely been deployed. A large number of wireless multiple access techniques were studied for achieving efficient and fair WLANs; however, little attention has been paid to access methods for improving total network throughput performance while maintaining fairness in the presence of legacy devices using DCF. So, we propose a novel random access technique called polite when unsynchronized (PWU) for seamless transition to efficient and fair WLANs. In PWU, each node has a new parameter, called the politeness level, which is a number between zero and one. A node with a higher politeness level becomes polite more frequently, and it tends to sense the channel for a bit longer compared to nodes usinga DCF. A politeness control algorithm (PCA) is studied, and it is shown that nodes using PCA maintains a high level of fairness to nodes using DCF in terms of channel access opportunities when they coexist.