A per-class QoS service model in IEEE 802.11e WLANs

In this paper, we study the provision of per-class QoS for IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) WLANs. We propose two mechanisms, called BIWF-SP and IDFQ-SP, based on backoff interval (BI) and inter-frame space (IFS), respectively. In our mechanisms, both strict priority and proportional fair service are supported. We describe the operations of the proposed mechanisms in details, and compare their performance with the original EDCA mechanism via simulations. The results show that both BIWF-SP and IDFQ-SP outperform the original EDCA in terms of the support for both strict priority and weighted fair service. Compared to IDFQ-SP, BIWF-SP is easier to be implemented in real systems; compared to BIWF-SP, IDFQ-SP has better aggregate throughput and is more stable. More importantly, both mechanisms conform to the IEEE 802.11e EDCA standard, rendering both good candidates to provide per-class QoS service for IEEE 802.11 WLANs