Analytical Modeling of the IEEE 802.11e EDCA Network

Contention Free Burst (CFB) is a promising burst transmission scheme defined in the IEEE 802.11e Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to achieve differentiated Quality of Service (QoS) and improve the utilization of the wireless scarce bandwidth. Although modeling and performance analysis of the IEEE 802.11e network have attracted tremendous research efforts from both the academia and industry, most existing analytical models do not give attention to the CFB QoS parameter. In this paper, we aim to propose a simple analytical model of the IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) function including mainly the CFB, in order to study its effect on the improvement of the achievable throughput of Video and Voice Access Categories (ACs). Therefore, we propose a new two-dimensional Markov chain model of the IEEE 802.11e EDCA function with CFB. Then, we develop a mathematical model to derive the saturation throughput. Finally, performance analysis has allowed us to estimate the maximum sustainable throughput with CFB in an IEEE 802.11e-EDCA network under infinite load conditions.