Title: Energy efficiency and QoS optimisations of IEEE 802.11 communications using frame aggregation

Authors: Jean Lorchat, Thomas Noel

Addresses: de l'Informatique et de la teledetection, Laboratoire des Sciences de l'Image, Universite Louis Pasteur, Illkirch 67400, France. ' de l'Informatique et de la teledetection, Laboratoire des Sciences de l'Image, Universite Louis Pasteur, Illkirch 67400, France

Abstract: This paper introduces a new mechanism for IEEE 802.11 infrastructure networks that allows to save energy on battery powered devices by adding some processing on the wireless Access Point (AP). Although the main advantage of this mechanism is energy efficiency, it aims at improving the link Quality of Service (QoS) by providing better throughput and latency for a given number of stations, in comparison to IEEE 802.11 regular performance. The power saving mode integrated in IEEE 802.11 standard is very power efficient, however it is not usable in realtime communications because it adds too much latency. In addition our optimisation can be implemented on an AP without preventing regular stations from operating with this AP, and it allows for mixed operation of both regular and optimised rotocols.

Keywords: IEEE 802.11; energy efficiency; local area networks; WLANs; wireless LANs; medium access control; MAC; optimisation; embedded devices; quality of service; QoS; latency; frame aggregation; wireless networks; energy consumption; battery powered devices.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWMC.2006.012557

International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing, 2006 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.229 - 238

Published online: 22 Feb 2007 *

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