On the Asymptotic Validity of the Decoupling Assumption for Analyzing 802.11 MAC Protocol
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Publication:2989706
DOI10.1109/TIT.2012.2208582zbMATH Open1364.94361arXiv1106.6328MaRDI QIDQ2989706FDOQ2989706
Authors: Jeong-Woo Cho, Jean-Yves Le Boudec, Yuming Jiang 
Publication date: 8 June 2017
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)
Abstract: Performance evaluation of the 802.11 MAC protocol is classically based on the decoupling assumption, which hypothesizes that the backoff processes at different nodes are independent. This decoupling assumption results from mean field convergence and is generally true in transient regime in the asymptotic sense (when the number of wireless nodes tends to infinity), but, contrary to widespread belief, may not necessarily hold in stationary regime. The issue is often related with the existence and uniqueness of a solution to a fixed point equation; however, it was also recently shown that this condition is not sufficient; in contrast, a sufficient condition is a global stability property of the associated ordinary differential equation. In this paper, we give a simple condition that establishes the asymptotic validity of the decoupling assumption for the homogeneous case. We also discuss the heterogeneous and the differentiated service cases and formulate a new ordinary differential equation. We show that the uniqueness of a solution to the associated fixed point equation is not sufficient; we exhibit one case where the fixed point equation has a unique solution but the decoupling assumption is not valid in the asymptotic sense in stationary regime.
Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.6328
Channel models (including quantum) in information and communication theory (94A40) Network protocols (68M12)
Cited In (2)
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