Investigating QOS on 802.11 wireless network

Abstract

In the last few years wireless local area networks became more and more popular, that mean to enabling access to the Internet and to private or company networks all over the place. Wireless technology has enabled us to send and receive data easily and more convenient in comparison with wired network

With the increasing amount of users and their demand for running more applications, exchanging

or sharing larger and larger quantities of data, the network have to ensure that the packets doesn’t lost or delay during data transmission. Some problem that happens for VoIP and VoD service like the audio and film background doesn’t run the same time or loading for along time, users can’t use the IP phone for calling while other are downloading data…

Quality of service (QoS) is a key for solving problem. Many previous research works show that some technologies are used in a wired network cannot be directly applied in the wireless environment. Although IEEE 802.11 WLAN is the most widely used WLAN standard today, it cannot provide QoS support for the increasing number of multimedia applications.

In this Thesis report we have studied the WLAN technology in detail with special emphasis on

QoS issues which focus on CSMA/CA protocol of 802.11, and different MAC schemes that are used to accommodate different types of traffic.

Finally, the upcoming IEEE 802.11e QoS enhancement standard is introduced and studied in details.