Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access

Most of the recent analytical studies for IEEE802.11e quality of service (QoS)-aware enhanced distributed coordination function require a large degree of complexity that are difficult to apply to a wide range of parameter settings for the evaluation of service differentiation mechanisms supported in enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA), including the contention window (CW) and arbitrary inter-frame space (AIFS) mechanisms. The authors propose a novel analytical model to analyse the throughput of EDCA with AIFS and CW differentiation schemes. The model is simplified by decomposing the problem into two easily solved Markov chains that can jointly be solved by numerical method. The authors present simulation and analytical results over a broad range of system parameters to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed model. Compared to the previous models, our model is simple to implement and can be applied to a general configuration circumstances for the evaluation of EDCA. The results are valuable to facilitate proper design of parameters in 802.11e EDCA for the QoS support required by specific applications.