Energy-efficiency maximization mechanism for IEEE 802.11e contention-based MAC protocols

This paper proposes a new mechanism to improve the energy-efficiency of the IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) MAC protocol. The proposed mechanism tries to reduce the number of collisions, which represents a major source of energy waste, especially in high traffic load. This mechanism tries to adapt the value of AIFSN MAC parameter of EDCA for the different access categories, according to the collision rate in the network. This dynamic adaptation mechanism is based on a fuzzy logic controller. The simulation results show that the proposed mechanism significantly improves the energy-efficiency of IEEE 802.11e EDCA, and in addition, contributes in improving the traffic performance (delay, throughput, etc.).