Modeling of Real-Time Multimedia Streaming in Wi-Fi Networks With Periodic Reservations

An important problem of modern Wi-Fis is the interferences caused by hidden stations active in the same area, or in multihop communications. All these issues significantly degrade the efficiency of the random channel access methods. Recent standardization and research activities are focused on solving coordination problems between various Wi-Fi devices. For example, the ongoing development of Wi-Fi 7 includes a coordinated schedule between the access points as a candidate solution. Consequently, Wi-Fi has many deterministic channel access mechanisms, which schedule channel time in a periodic manner well in advance and, thus, are utilized for streaming QoS sensitive data. However, both random traffic intensity and error-prone nature of the wireless channel complicate choosing such reservation parameters, i.e., the duration and the period of the reserved time intervals, that satisfy QoS requirements while minimizing channel time consumption. This paper introduces a general mathematical framework to solve the problem of choosing appropriate reservations parameters. The comparison of the analytical and simulation results show the high accuracy of the proposed framework. Finally, the paper gives an example of how to use the developed framework to maximize the network capacity.