A packet-bursting based method to improve MAC laver fairness without throughput reduction

IEEE802.11, which is the most widely used wireless LAN standard protocol, employs Binary Exponential Back-off (BEB) for reducing packet collisions. Although the BEB can effectively avoid packet collision by a simple mechanism, transmission unfairness arises under high traffic environment. Then, a large number of algorithms aimed at reducing unfairness on BEB have been reported. Most of those algorithms could increase fairness, but it also decreases throughput. In addition, these algorithms have developed based on the assumption that all terminals equips the same algorithm. This paper proposes an adaptive method that only terminals entering unfair states sequentially transmit several packets without reducing throughput performance. Computer simulations confirm that the proposed method works well to improve unfairness in a network even if the network contains legacy IEEE802.11DCF terminals as well as terminals utilizing the proposed method.