Detailed Analysis for IEEE 802.11e EDCA in Non-saturated Conditions - Frame-Transmission-Cycle Approach

Theoretical analysis of the IEEE802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism is now a mature research theme and is receiving considerable attention. Most previous studies have focused on the saturation throughput, but typical networks are non-saturated in practice. We herein propose an analytical model for IEEE 802.11e EDCA under non-saturated conditions based on the frame-transmission-cycle approach. The approach considered herein focuses on the status of each station at the start of the frame-transmission cycle, and describes the state transition by a Markov chain. Through comparison with simulation results obtained by ns2, we confirm that the proposed model accurately estimates the throughput performance of EDCA-based WLANs in which voice and best effort traffic are multiplexed.