Distributed throughput optimization for heterogeneous IEEE 802.11 DCF networks

For IEEE 802.11 DCF networks in ad-hoc mode, how to achieve the maximum throughput in a distributed manner draws much attention in previous studies. The problem becomes challenging for partially-saturated heterogeneous networks with multiple groups, as the optimal access parameters not only depend on the group size of saturated groups but also the aggregate input rate of all the unsaturated groups, both of which are hard to obtain without a central controller. In this paper, a novel distributive scheme is proposed for partially-saturated heterogeneous IEEE 802.11 DCF networks to achieve the maximum network throughput. With the proposed scheme, each saturated transmitter can obtain the optimal initial backoff window size distributively by two estimation rounds. In each estimation round, each saturated transmitter only needs to count the number of busy intervals and ACK frames on the channel. For fully-saturated networks, only one estimation round is needed. It is shown by extensive simulations that the proposed scheme can achieve the maximum network throughput in a distributive manner.