Queue-based priority MAC for WLANs

Recent studies have shown that it is possible to approximate throughput optimal scheduling using distributed Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA). These studies build on the idea of maximal-weight scheduling, where the set of links scheduled in each slot are the non-conflicting links with maximum sum of their queue lengths. However, conditions imposed by real environments including imperfect carrier sensing, collisions and the distributed nature of the protocol make it challenging to develop throughput optimal schemes for CSMA. In this paper we propose an implementation of queue-based scheduling that addresses these challenges and is suitable for implementation in 802.11 networks with minimal modifications. We evaluate the proposed protocol and have shown significant performance improvements of up to 98% in TCP flows in a typical WLAN setting, without negatively impacting fairness.