Inverse Binary Exponential Backoff: Enhancing Short-term Fairness for IEEE 802.11 Networks

The binary exponential backoff (BEB) scheme has been adapted by the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are the de facto standards for wireless LANs. The BEB scheme is fair among wireless devices in the long term, but it has been shown to be unfair in the short term. In this paper, we propose a new backoff scheme called the inverse binary exponential backoff (iBEB) scheme for IEEE 802.11 networks to enhance short-term fairness without any estimation or contention window adjustment, improve the network throughput, and reduce the collision probability. Simulation and analytical results are also presented to study the performance of the proposed iBEB scheme, in terms of throughput, delay, and collision probability.