Optimal Configuration of IEEE 802.11e EDCA with Variable Packet Length

This paper addresses the optimal configuration in IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) wireless local area networks (WLANs). Most of the previous studies assumed that all access categories (ACs) have the same packet length. However, this assumption is not true in most practical cases. Generally, different applications have different traffic characteristics including packet length. In this paper, we study how to achieve the maximal protocol capacity of EDCA by properly choosing the protocol parameters. We prove that the maximal protocol capacity can be approximately achieved by setting the network at an optimal operating point. Furthermore, we propose a parameter configuration scheme to achieve efficient channel utilization and proportional fairness among different ACs. The proposed scheme is validated through analysis and extensive simulation.