Throughput and delay fairness through an agile medium-transparent MAC protocol for 60GHz fiber-wireless LAN networks

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel Medium-Transparent MAC (MT-MAC) protocol with enhanced end-user service delivery fairness properties for use in Gbps capable, 60 GHz Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) LAN networks. Our approach relies on incorporating a Client Weighted Algorithm (CWA) in the optical capacity allocation mechanism employed in the MT-MAC scheme, so as to distribute the available wavelengths to the different antenna units according to the total number of active users served by each individual antenna. The protocol's throughput fairness characteristics are confirmed through extensive simulations for different end-user's distributions, vaying traffic loads and multiple optical wavelength availabilities at 1 Gbps data rates. The presented results shoe that complete throughput and delay equalization can be achieved even for highly varying user population patterns among the different antenna units when certain wavelength availability conditions are satisfied. The performance of the proposed protocol has been compared with respective results obtained by the state-of-art MT-MAC scheme where a round-robin arbitration algorithm is used, clearly confirming the increased fairness capabilities of our approach. In addition, the proposed scheme is simple amd remains clearly distinct from the wireless capacity arbitration process, highlighting in this way the high-level agility and flexibility of the MT-MAC platform for use in high-speed 60 Ghz FiWi LANs.