A QoS-aware MAC layer protocol for wireless LANs

With advances in physical layer technologies, WLANs are now connected with wired networks and act as parts of the entire networks. Since demands for QoS sensitive applications are extremely high, WLANs, as parts of heterogeneous networks, are required to be QoS-aware. In this paper we present a new QoS-aware multi-access scheme, called ADCF, designed to assure weighted fair queuing in a purely distributed way and to achieve admission control per frame. The results of simulations show that ADCF yields stable weighted fair queuing with consistent performance under most conditions. In most cases, ADCF outperforms DCF of IEEE 802.11 and EDCF of IEEE 802.11e. Also, ADCF guarantees starvation free channel access for a low priority flow.