Improving throughput for heterogeneous traffic in IEEE802.11e EDCA

An analytical model is proposed to describe the priority schemes of the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism of the IEEE 802.11e standard. EDCA provides class-based differentiated quality of service (QoS) to IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs). However, One of the main challenges with 802.11e EDCA is the configuration of the open parameters of this mechanism, namely arbitration inter frame space (AIFS), contention window (CW) and transmission opportunity (TXOP). In this paper, we focus on the optimal configuration of parameter CW in order to improve the throughput performance of the WLAN. We present an approach to set parameter CW according to channel status. Then, based on this model, we search for the optimal throughput with EDCA. Finally, we show the model is calculated numerically and validated against simulation results.