Performance analysis of multiple classes of traffic in Wi-Fi networks: A Markov chain-based approach

In this paper we introduce a mathematical model to analyze the performance of Wi-Fi networks carrying voice calls, TCP controlled file downloads, and video streaming traffic. We derive the voice call capacity, TCP throughput, video streaming throughput, and bandwidth utilization using the proposed five-dimensional Markov model. We show that there exists a correlation among the queue size of client nodes and the capacity and throughput of the network. We also demonstrate the effect of variable packet arrival rates on bandwidth utilization. Moreover, the proposed model is generic because some of the existing approaches become special cases of our model for a specific queue size. The analytical results match well with the experimental results generated by Qualnet simulator.