Bandwidth management in 802.11 wireless LANs

We developed and demonstrated a prototype 802.11b access point that is capable of providing committed bandwidth services to premium users and controls congestion in the wireless medium. We also implement a time-varying deficit round robin (DRR) scheduling algorithm that takes into account the randomly varying time intervals between RF transmissions. Premium users receive (transmit) and maintain their pre-assigned downstream (upstream) target bandwidth independent of the other users in the system, while regular users share the remainder of the bandwidth. Congestion control is achieved by identifying the "marginal MUs" that use a disproportionate amount of network resources due to poor signal quality, and selectively reduces the target bandwidth in order to maintain the desired QoS for the remaining premium users.