Evaluation of Detection Algorithms for MAC Layer Misbehavior: Theory and Experiments

We revisit the problem of detecting greedy behavior in the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol by evaluating the performance of two previously proposed schemes: DOMINO and the sequential probability ratio test (SPRT). Our evaluation is carried out in four steps. We first derive a new analytical formulation of the SPRT that considers access to the wireless medium in discrete time slots. Then, we introduce an analytical model for DOMINO. As a third step, we evaluate the theoretical performance of SPRT and DOMINO with newly introduced metrics that take into account the repeated nature of the tests. This theoretical comparison provides two major insights into the problem: it confirms the optimality of SPRT, and motivates us to define yet another test: a nonparametric CUSUM statistic that shares the same intuition as DOMINO but gives better performance. We finalize the paper with experimental results, confirming the correctness of our theoretical analysis and validating the introduction of the new nonparametric CUSUM statistic.