A distributed bandwidth management scheme for multi-hop wireless access networks

A synchronous distributed coordination function called Time-Division Unbalanced Carrier Sense Multiple Access (TD-uCSMA) has been proposed to provide CSMA/CA with a mechanism for bandwidth management over single-hop wireless networks. TD-uCSMA relies on synchronization among nodes and the time-driven switching of Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) parameters inside nodes. The solution, currently assessed in single-hop scenarios with CBR traffic profiles, is here validated on multi-hop scenarios and generalized to support heterogeneous traffic aggregates. This requires the definition of a bandwidth reservation model able to manage traffic aggregates with variable bit-rate and packet length. Notably the devised model shows a first order dependence only on bit-rate and on packet length statistics (mean and variance) due to a straight-forward consequence of the TD-uCSMA operating principles. Simulations validate this simple bandwidth reservation model and show its effectiveness over multi-hop wireless access networks.