Characterization of service times burstiness of IEEE 802.11 DCF

First order metrics (throughput, average delay) of the IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol have been extensively analyzed. The service process of the same protocol has not received the same attention, although it is known that it might be bursty. We develop a simple and accurate Markov model that allows a complete characterization of the service process of an 802.11 BSS. A major result of simulations is that correlation between consecutive service times is negligible, hence the service process can be safely described as a renewal process. The analytic model highlights that service burstiness lies essentially in the doubling of the contention window after a collision up to very large values. The trade-off between average throughput and service burstiness is obtained from the model. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.