Achieving Service Differentiation and High Utilization in IEEE 802.11

Service differentiation in wireless LANs is a growing demand, due to their increasing use for applications with different requirements and the scarcity of wireless channel resources, and is becoming particularly important with the emergence of wireless LAN hotspots. The contribution of this paper is twofold: First, we investigate how various parameters of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol affect service differentiation, in terms of both throughput and delay. Second, we propose a new approach for providing service differentiation, while achieving high wireless network utilization. Simulation investigations demonstrate that our approach can effectively adapt to varying network conditions, hence can achieve high overall network utilization. The approach can be implemented at the access point of a wireless LAN, while the wireless stations need only to support the emerging IEEE 802.11e standard.