Sniffing out the correct physical layer capture model in 802.11b

Physical layer capture (PLC) in 802.11b refers to the successful reception of the stronger (higher signal strength at receiver) frame in a collision. PLC causes significant imbalance in the throughputs of sources. Existing 802.11b simulators, including ns2 and Qualnet, assume that PLC occurs only if the stronger frame arrives first at the receiver. We show empirically that in reality PLC occurs even if the stronger frame arrives later (but within the physical layer preamble of the first frame). Consequently, throughput unfairness in reality can be significantly (up to 15%) higher than with the former PLC model. We have modified the ns2 simulator to account for this and Qualnet is incorporating a fix in their next release. To identify which frames were involved in collisions, when their transmissions started, and which of them were retrieved, we have devised a novel technique using multiple sniffers and instrumented device drivers to reconstruct from the air interface all tx/rx events in a WLAN to within 4 μs accuracy. This allows us to quantify the causal links from the PHY layer through the MAC layer to the observed application layer imbalance. It also shows that the arrival times of colliding frames routinely differ by as much as 20 μs due to inherent uncertainties of 802.11b firmware clock synchronization and rx/tx turnaround delays, and that the frame to arrive first can be either the stronger or the weaker with equal likelihood.