Enhancing IEEE802.11 DCF using Genetic Programming

This paper introduces a method of designing optimized MAC layer algorithms using genetic programming. By evolving entire algorithmic behaviour rather than optimizing a set of values to tune a parameterized design, a much wider space of behaviour can be explored automatically. This technique is illustrated using the variation of contention window size that is part of the distributed coordination function of 802.11. When applied to the example of a variable sized network under saturated load this approach produces expressions that comfortably outperform the standard 802.11b behaviour. Also, despite being automatically generated, these solutions achieve the throughput performance of the best enhancements to this aspect of the protocol