Orthogonal signaling-based queue status investigation method in IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11 specifies four different medium access control (MAC) protocols to coordinate multiple access in a wireless local area network (WLAN). Since several tens of stations can operate in a WLAN, the performance of MAC protocols is important for overall network efficiency. It has been observed that the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols can be improved by knowing which station has a non-empty queue, i.e., queue status. The point coordination function (PCF) can use this information to avoid polling a station that has no pending data. The HCF controlled channel access can adapt polling parameters based on queue status information, especially when scheduling a bursty and variable bit-rate traffic. Previously suggested methods are rather limited in terms of accuracy and efficiency.In this paper, we propose a novel method to investigate the queue status of multiple stations by exploiting orthogonal signaling. With synchronous transmission of orthogonal codes and symbol level signal processing, the method allows all of the associated stations to report their queue status at the same time. Challenges that can arise in the implementation of the proposed method are identified, and their solutions are suggested. The feasibility of detecting orthogonal signals is thoroughly tested on a realistic channel model. To demonstrate the performance improvement of a MAC protocol, we applied the proposed method to PCF. Both analysis and simulation show that the modified PCF significantly outperforms not only the original PCF but also other previously suggested PCF enhancements.