Tuning Wi-Fi Traffic Differentiation by Combining Frame Aggregation with TXOP Limits

There are two IEEE 802.11 mechanisms which enhance Wi-Fi network efficiency by lowering communication overhead: the legacy transmission opportunity (TXOP) limit and frame aggregation. According to the IEEE 802.11 standard, frame aggregation has priority over TXOP duration settings, in some cases completely overriding legacy behavior. Therefore, Wi-Fi vendors and administrators may resign from enabling TXOP limit which, as we show in this letter, is not always a good choice. We base our findings on the presented analytical throughput model of 802.11ac (validated by ns-3 simulations), which allows measuring interactions between the two considered mechanisms and their impact on traffic differentiation in 802.11 networks.