Performance analysis of wireless LANs: an integrated packet/flow level approach

In this paper we present an integrated packet/flow level modelling approach for analysing flow throughputs and transfer times in IEEE 802.11 WLANs. The packet level model captures the statistical characteristics of the transmission of individual packets at the MAC layer, while the flow level model takes into account the system dynamics due to the initiation and completion of data flow transfers. The latter model is a processor sharing type of queueing model reflecting the IEEE 802.11 MAC design principle of distributing the transmission capacity fairly among the active flows. The resulting integrated packet/flow level model is analytically tractable and yields a simple approximation for the throughput and flow transfer time. Extensive simulations show that the approximation is very accurate for a wide range of parameter settings. In addition, the simulation study confirms the attractive property following from our approximation that the expected flow transfer delay is insensitive to the flow size distribution (apart from its mean).