Analytical model for IEEE 802.11e EDCA with non-saturated stations

Theoretical analysis of IEEE802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism is now a mature research theme, receiving considerable attention. However, most of these works depend on per-slot status, namely probability of transmission attempt and collisions at each slot. Tinnirello et al. [1] present an analytic model which does not rely on per-slot status under a saturated traffic assumption, whereas typical network conditions are non-saturated and heterogeneous. We present an extension of their model to a non-saturated environment. Through the comparison with the simulation results by ns2, we confirm that the proposed model accurately estimate the throughput performance of the EDCA-based WLANs where voice and best effort traffic are multiplexed together.