Random Access Protocols for WLANs Based on Mechanism Design

In wireless local area networks (WLANs), quality of service (QoS) can be provided by mapping applications with different requirements (e.g., delay and throughput) into one of the available access categories (ACs), as is done in the IEEE 802.11e standard. With the increasing programmability of network adapters, a malicious user can strategically declare a higher AC for its application to gain an unfair share of resources. This can drastically degrade the network performance and avoid adequate service distinction among different ACs. In this paper, we use the technique of mechanism design in game theory to tackle this problem in WLANs with random access. We propose to use the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism in order to motivate each station to inform the access point (AP) truthfully, about the required AC of its application. The AP will then inform each station about its persistent probability and the price it needs to pay for the offered service. The result of the allocation of the persistent probabilities can be used for admission control. Simulation results show that the use of mechanism design can lead to a higher aggregate utility and prevents malicious users from gaining an unfair share of the network bandwidth.