=Paper= {{Paper |id=Vol-1689/paper7 |storemode=property |title=Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms in the New Generation WiFi |pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1689/paper7.pdf |volume=Vol-1689 |authors=Mohand Yazid,Louiza Bouallouche-Medjkoune,Djamil Aïssani |dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/vecos/YazidBA16 }} ==Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms in the New Generation WiFi == https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1689/paper7.pdf
      Performance Study of Frame Aggregation
      Mechanisms in the New Generation WiFi

                   Mohand Yazid           Louiza Medjkoune-Bouallouche             Djamil Aı̈ssani
              Research Unit LaMOS             Research Unit LaMOS              Research Unit LaMOS
             Faculty of Exact Sciences       Faculty of Exact Sciences        Faculty of Exact Sciences
                University of Bejaia            University of Bejaia             University of Bejaia
               06000 Bejaia, Algeria           06000 Bejaia, Algeria            06000 Bejaia, Algeria
            yazid.mohand@gmail.Com         louiza medjkoune@yahoo.fr         lamos bejaia@hotmail.com



   The new generation WiFi (Widely Fidelity), which is called 802.11ac, has the goal of reaching at least 1 Gbps
   on bands below 6 GHz. This is why, the standard has been extended with new features at both PHYsical
   (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers level. One of the key features of MAC layer is the ability of
   aggregating frames in order to reduce temporal overheads that significantly harm the performance of 802.11
   networks. Three forms of aggregation exist, namely Aggregate MAC Service Data Unit (A-MSDU), Aggregate
   MAC Protocol Data Unit (A-MPDU) and hybrid A-MSDU/A-MPDU Aggregation (A-hybrid). In this paper, we
   study the impact of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms (FAMs) for improving the overall throughput of 802.11ac
   networks. Furthermore, we highlight the need of PHY/MAC cross-layer communications for optimizing the
   wireless bandwidth utilization. Simulation results demonstrate the gains offered by the FAMs.

               IEEE 802.11ac, Frame Aggregation Mechanisms, Physical Data Rates, Simulation and Performance Study.

1. INTRODUCTION                                              Several key enhancements have been proposed to
                                                             both the PHY and MAC layers of the IEEE 802.11ac
More than any time ever before, today technology             standard in order to reach gigabit throughput rates
has a significant impact on people’s lives. The pro-         (Charfi et al. (2013)). On the one hand, substantial
liferation of slim, mobile, and portable devices such        modifications are required at the PHY layer in order
as notebooks, ultrabooks, tablets, and smartphones           to increase the PHY data rates (Ismail el. (2013)).
is a clear testament to the importance of wireless           On the other hand, the IEEE 802.11ac standard
communications in modern society (Cordeiro et al.            specifies the use of different Frame Aggregation
(2013)). The most notable example of wireless sys-           Mechanisms (FAMs) at the MAC layer level in
tems with data rates greater than 1 Gbps, includes           order to increase the channel utilization and MAC
the IEEE 802.11ac amendment to the base IEEE                 efficiency (Charfi et al. (2012)). The IEEE 802.11ac
802.11 standard (IEEE 802.11ac Standard (2013)).             standard boasts better MAC layer efficiency through
Several companies have announced products imple-             innovative mechanisms such as Frame Aggregation
menting this technology, with a few of those prod-           (FA) and Block Acknowledgment (ACK) (Yazid et al.
ucts already available, or soon to be available, to          (2015)). Three forms of aggregation exist, namely:
consumers (Cordeiro et al. (2013)). The data rates           Aggregate MAC Service Data Unit (A-MSDU),
provided by IEEE 802.11ac can meet the needs of              Aggregate MAC Protocol Data Unit (A-MPDU) and
many applications, with replacement of Wired Digital         hybrid A-MSDU/A-MPDU Aggregation (A-hybrid).
Interface (WDI) cables arguably the most promi-              These involve aggregating several MPDU/MSDU
nent new use of this technology. To this end, the            frames (called sub-frames) into one larger frame,
IEEE 802.11ac Task Group (TGac) is working on an             and as a result only require a single MAC layer
amendment that has the goal of reaching maximum              header for it to be accepted by the PHY layer
aggregate network throughputs of at least 1 Gbps             (Al-Adhami et al. (2012)). Thus, the laborious
on bands below 6 GHz (Yazid et al. (2014)). Due to           channel access of the Carrier Sense Multiple Access
the significant rate increase achieved by 802.11ac,          with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol is
the term Very High Throughput (VHT) is also used             considerably reduced by the sharing of the PHY
in reference to this new amendment (Bejarano et al.          header and channel access mechanism among the
(2013)).                                                     MPDUs of the A-MPDU. Hence, the MAC layer
                                 Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
                                       Yazid • Bouallouche-Medjkoune • Aı̈ssani


efficiency is considerably improved (Redieteab et al.         followed by the MSDU arrived from the Logical Link
(2012)).                                                      Control (LLC) layer and 0-3 bytes of padding. A
                                                              major drawback of using A-MSDU is under error-
The main contribution of this paper is to analyze             prone channels. By compressing all MSDUs into a
the potential benefits in terms of MAC throughput             single MPDU with a single Frame Check Sequence
gains of IEEE 802.11ac WLANs over various                     (FCS), for any MSDUs that are corrupted, the entire
Frame Aggregation Mechanisms and practical PHY                A-MSDU must be retransmitted (Skordoulis et al.
data rates. In the same way, we highlight the                 (2008)).
need to cross-layer communications between the
PHY and MAC layers in order to increase the
efficiency of the wireless channel utilization. In
addition, we demonstrate that hybrid A-MSDU/A-
MPDU aggregation yields the best throughput for the
IEEE 802.11ac WLANs.

The reminder of this paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 presents the different mechanisms of
Frame Aggregation introduced in the IEEE 802.11ac
standard. Section 3 gives a review of existing studies
on Frame Aggregation Mechanisms. Simulation                                 Figure 1: Aggregate MSDU.
results and performance analysis are presented
in Section 4. Finally, our main conclusions are               2.2. Aggregate MPDU
summarized in Section 5.
                                                              The concept of A-MPDU aggregation is to join
                                                              multiple MPDUs with a single leading PHY header.
2. FRAME AGGREGATION MECHANISMS
                                                              A key difference from A-MSDU aggregation is that A-
There are three methods available to perform frame            MPDU operates after the MAC header encapsulation
aggregation: Aggregate MAC Service Data Unit (A-              process. The utmost number of MPDUs that it can
MSDU), Aggregate MAC Protocol Data Unit (A-                   hold is 64 because a Block ACK bitmap field is 128
MPDU) and hybrid A-MSDU/A-MPDU Aggregation                    bytes in length, where each MPDU is mapped using
(A-hybrid) (Charfi et al. (2012)). The main distinction       two bytes (Charfi et al. (2012)). The basic structure
between an MSDU and an MPDU is that the former                is shown in Figure 2.
corresponds to the information that is imported to
or exported from the upper part of the MAC layer              A set of fields, known as MPDU header is inserted
from or to the higher layers, respectively. Whereas,          before each MPDU and padding bits varied from 0-3
the latter relates to the information that is exchanged       bytes are added at the tail. The basic operation of the
from or to the PHY layer by the lower part of the MAC         MPDU header is to define the MPDU position and
layer. Aggregate exchange sequences are made                  length inside the A-MPDU. The Cyclic Redundancy
possible with a protocol that acknowledges multiple           Check (CRC) field in the MPDU header is used to
MPDUs with a single Block ACK (BA) in response                verify the authenticity of the 16 preceding bits. After
to a Block ACK Request (BAR) (Skordoulis et al.               the A-MPDU is received, a de-aggregation process
(2008)).                                                      is initiates. First it checks the MPDU header for any
                                                              errors based on the CRC value. If it is correct, the
2.1. Aggregate MSDU                                           MPDU is extracted, and it continues with the next
                                                              MPDU till it reaches the end of the PHY Service
The principle of the A-MSDU is to allow multiple              Data Unit (PSDU). Otherwise, it checks every four
MSDUs sent to the same receiver to be concate-                bytes until it locates a valid MPDU header or the end
nated in a single MPDU. This definitively improves            of the PSDU. The delimiter has a unique pattern to
the efficiency of the MAC layer, specifically when            assist the de-aggregation process while scanning for
there are many small MSDUs. For an A-MSDU to be               MPDU header (Skordoulis et al. (2008)).
formed, a layer at the top of the MAC receives and
buffers multiple MSDUs. The A-MSDU is completed               2.3. Hybrid A-MSDU/A-MPDU Aggregation
when the size of the waiting MSDUs reaches the
maximal A-MSDU threshold (Charfi et al. (2013)).              The hybrid aggregation as shown in Figure 3
                                                              comprises a blend of A-MSDU and A-MPDU over
In Figure 1, we describe a simple structure of an A-          two stages. In the first stage, MSDUs received
MSDU. Each MSDU consists of a MSDU header,                    by MAC from the upper layer are buffered for a
which contains the Destination Address (DA), the              short time until A-MSDUs are formed according to
Sender Address (SA) and the length of the MSDU,               their traffic identifier, destination, source, and the



                                                          2
                                Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
                                      Yazid • Bouallouche-Medjkoune • Aı̈ssani


                                                             et al. (Cha et al. (2012)) compared the performance
                                                             of the two down-link user multiplexing schemes: MU-
                                                             MIMO and frame aggregation in IEEE 802.11ac. The
                                                             authors showed that, if each user’s data stream has
                                                             a similar length, the MU-MIMO scheme yields better
                                                             average throughput. Whereas, if each user’s data
                                                             stream has a different length, the frame aggregation
                                                             scheme outperforms the MU-MIMO scheme in terms
                                                             of average throughput. Chung et al. (Chung et
                                                             al. (2013)) proposed an aggregated MPDU using
                                                             fragmented MPDUs with a compressed Block ACK
             Figure 2: Aggregate MPDU.
                                                             mechanism for use in IEEE 802.11ac MU-MIMO
                                                             transmission. The authors showed that, by allowing
maximum size of A-MSDU. The complete A-MSDUs                 the use of fragmentation with the A-MPDU, the waste
and other non-aggregate MSDUs then enter the                 of medium resources in terms of meaningless A-
second stage to form an A-MPDU. Only complete                MPDU padding can be eliminated.
A-MSDUs and MSDUs, not the fragments of A-
                                                             It is clear that, the frame aggregation and block
MSDUs or MSDUs, could be contained in an A-
                                                             acknowledgement are the most important MAC
MPDU. The entire aggregation scheme completes
                                                             mechanisms proposed in the new generation IEEE
when A-MPDU is created (Wang et al. (2009)).
                                                             802.11ac WLANs standard for achieving a very high
                                                             throughput. This is due to their efficiency of reducing
                                                             the temporal overheads caused mainly by the PHY
                                                             and MAC headers, inter-frame spacing, backoff timer
                                                             and frame ACK. However, non of the existing studies
                                                             has been devoted to evaluate the performance level
                                                             and quantify the throughput gains offered by the
                                                             frame aggregation mechanisms. This is why, we
                                                             dedicate this work to separately study how each
                                                             frame aggregation mechanism allows increasing the
                                                             overall throughput in an IEEE 802.11ac WLAN.
                                                             In the same way, we identify, for the first time
                                                             in the literature, some issues risen to the use
    Figure 3: Hybrid A-MSDU/A-MPDU aggregation.              of frame aggregation mechanisms with practical
                                                             physical data rates. These drawbacks should be
                                                             taken into account, in order to enhance the IEEE
3. RELATED WORKS AND MOTIVATIONS
                                                             802.11ac WLAN.
The Frame Aggregation Mechanisms, which are
designed for improving channel utilization and MAC           4. SIMULATION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
efficiency have received a large interest by the
research community. In the field, Redieteab et al.           In this section, we analyze the impact of the MAC
(Redieteab et al. (2010)) proposed a new cross-              layer to increase the overall throughput in the VHT
layer aggregation scheme that increases throughput           IEEE 802.11ac WLAN. Especially, we study how
as a compromise between robustness to collisions             the frame aggregation mechanisms allow enhancing
and channel diversity exploitation in a WLAN                 the utilization of the scarce wireless bandwidth and
multichannel context. Ong et al. (Ong et al. (2011))         improving the achievable throughput in an IEEE
compared the MAC performance between 802.11ac                802.11ac WLAN. Furthermore, we highlight the need
and 802.11n over three different frame aggregation           to cross-layer communications between the PHY
mechanisms, and indicated that 802.11ac with a               and MAC layers to accommodate the use of the
configuration of 80 MHz and single spatial streams           different frame aggregation mechanisms according
outperforms 802.11n with a configuration of 40 MHz           to the offered physical data rates.
and two spatial streams in terms of throughput by
28%. Bellalta et al. (Bellalta et al. (2012)) proposed       In order to analyze the gains of the different frame
and evaluated a simple reference scheme covering             aggregation mechanisms over several physical data
the fundamental properties of frame aggregation              rates in an IEEE 802.11ac WLAN, we have
and MU-MIMO transmission in order to demonstrate             implemented the IEEE 802.11ac frame aggregation
that the combination of both techniques is able to           mechanisms in a custom-made simulator written in
significantly improve the system performance. Cha            C++ programming language under Linux operating



                                                         3
                                Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
                                      Yazid • Bouallouche-Medjkoune • Aı̈ssani


system. The values of parameters used to obtain the                A-MSDU/A-MPDU aggregation. This scheme
simulation results are given in Table 1.                           allows the same maximum number of MPDUs
                                                                   as in A-MPDU aggregation. However, in
     Table 1: 802.11ac PHY and MAC Parameters.                     the hybrid aggregation, a single MPDU can
                                                                   encapsulate several MSDUs, conditioned by
   Parameter                    Numerical value                    the size of MPDU which does not exceed 4095
   Signal propagation delay     1 µs                               bytes.
   DIFS                         34 µs
   SIFS                         16 µs                           • Finally, we give a comparative study between
   Slot time                    9 µs                              the maximum throughput reached with the
   Minimum PHY hdr time         40 µs                             different frame aggregation mechanisms in
   Maximum PHY hdr time         68 µs                             an IEEE 802.11ac WLAN according to the
   Minimum CW                   32                                network size.
   Maximum CW                   1024
   Maximum MAC hdr size         36 bytes
   Maximum MPDU size            11454 bytes
   ACK length                   14 bytes
   Block-ACK length             64 bytes
   Maximum MSDU size            2304 bytes

The goal of the following obtained simulation
results is to show the relation existing between
the data rates (offered by the PHY layer) and
frame aggregation mechanisms (available at MAC
layer level), allowing an efficient use of the scarce            Figure 4: Bandwidth utilization versus data rate.
wireless bandwidth while improving the achievable
throughput in an IEEE 802.11ac WLAN. Therefore,
                                                             In Figure 4, we study the bandwidth utilization
our analysis is organized as follows:
                                                             according to the physical data rate without using
   • Firstly, we study the bandwidth utilization             the frame aggregation. Therefore, we have used
     rate according to various physical data                 a middle MPDU length (1000 bytes), an average
     rates without applying frame aggregation.               network size (15 stations), and we have varied the
     The objective of this study is to show                  physical data rate from 50 Mbps to 300 Mbps.
     that, increasing the physical data rate does            We observe from the Figure 4 that, the bandwidth
     not increase systematically the bandwidth               utilization is decreasing with the increase of physical
     utilization. So, the frame aggregation is               data rate; the greater the used physical data rate,
     required for increasing the bandwidth utilization       the lower the bandwidth utilization rate. We note
     and MAC efficiency.                                     that, with a physical data rate of 54 Mbps, the
                                                             bandwidth utilization rate is 37%. The bandwidth
   • Secondly, we evaluate the first existing frame          utilization decreases to 12%, when the physical data
     aggregation scheme, which is the A-MSDU                 rate reaches 300 Mbps. This is mainly due to the
     aggregation. So, we quantify the achievable             PHY and MAC headers which harm the bandwidth
     throughput with the A-MSDU aggregation                  utilization and the achievable throughput of IEEE
     scheme according to the A-MSDU length. With             802.11 WLANs. By enabling new features (like wider
     the A-MSDU aggregation, we already note the             channels and MU-MIMO transmission) at the PHY
     benefit gain of the frame aggregation in an             layer, it is true that, the physical data rate is highly
     IEEE 802.11ac WLAN.                                     increased. However, as we have shown in Figure
                                                             4, the channel bandwidth is less and less utilized.
   • Thirdly, we evaluate the second frame aggre-
                                                             This can be explained by the fact that the physical
     gation scheme, which is the A-MPDU aggre-
                                                             data rates are only used to transmit the payload
     gation. This scheme offers greater length to
                                                             of the 802.11 frame (the useful data). However,
     the aggregated frame, up to 64 MPDUs in the
                                                             the PHY and MAC headers are always transmitted
     same A-MPDU, where the payload length of
                                                             by using the physical basic rate, which is very
     each MPDU does not exceed 2304 bytes. Sev-
                                                             low compared to the physical data rates. This is
     eral simulation results will be given according
                                                             why, when increasing the physical data rate, the
     to the number of MPDUs with different MPDU
                                                             time duration spent to transmit the PHY and MAC
     lengths and physical data rates.
                                                             headers becomes larger and larger compared to the
   • Fourthly, we report on the third and last               time duration spent to transmit the frame payload.
     frame aggregation scheme, which is the hybrid           Consequently, the channel bandwidth is less utilized.



                                                         4
                               Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
                                     Yazid • Bouallouche-Medjkoune • Aı̈ssani


So, increasing the data rate at the PHY layer does          with different MPDU frame lengths (1000 bytes and
not systematically increase the bandwidth utilization       2000 bytes), and over various physical data rates (54
and MAC efficiency. Thereby, the frame aggregation          Mbps, 100 Mbps and 150 Mbps).
and block acknowledgment are required at MAC
layer level in order to share among several frames
the overheads mainly generated by the PHY and
MAC headers, and inter-frame spacing.




                                                            Figure 6: Throughput versus A-MPDU length over a data
                                                            rate of 54 Mbps.

                                                            We remark from Figure 6 that, the achievable
     Figure 5: Throughput versus A-MSDU length.             throughput with the A-MPDU aggregation increases,
                                                            at the beginning, with the increase of the number of
In Figure 5, we analyze the achievable throughput           MPDU frames in an A-MPDU frame, for both MPDU
in an IEEE 802.11ac WLAN, when using the A-                 frame lengths 1000 bytes and 2000 bytes. However,
MSDU frame aggregation mechanism at the MAC                 when the number of MPDU frames exceeds 40
layer level, according to the number of MSDU frames         MPDUs and 16 MPDUs respectively for the MPDU
aggregated in an A-MSDU frame. Therefore, we                frame lengths of 1000 bytes and 2000 bytes, the
have fixed the PHY data rate at 54 Mbps, the network        achievable throughput decreases along the increase
size at 15 stations, and we have varied the number          of the number of MPDU frames. This degradation
of MSDUs in an A-MSDU frame from 1 to 7 (i.e.,              in more remarkable in case of MPDU frame length
we have varied the length of the A-MSDU frame               of 2000 bytes, where the throughput increases first
from 1000 bytes to 7000 bytes). We observe from             from 26 Mbps (with 1 MPDU) to 37 Mbps (with
Figure 5 that, the larger the A-MSDU frame length,          16 MPDUs), then it decreases to 27 Mbps (with
the greater the achievable throughput in the IEEE           64 MPDUs). Through these results, we show for
802.11ac WLAN. We remark that, with an A-MSDU               the first time in the literature that, with a specific
frame of 1000 bytes the achievable throughput is            value of physical data rate (54 Mbps, for example),
17 Mbps, it increases to 30 Mbps with an A-MSDU             there is an optimum length of the A-MPDU frame
frame of 7000 bytes. In terms of channel bandwidth,         which allows the IEEE 802.11ac WLAN to achieve
by enabling the A-MSDU aggregation at MAC layer             the maximum throughput. Beyond of this A-MPDU
level, the bandwidth utilization increases from 32%         length, the achievable throughput will decrease with
to 56% when the A-MSDU frame length increases               the increase of A-MPDU length. Traditionally, we
from 1000 bytes to 7000 bytes. This significant             think that, increasing the amount of transmitted data
improvement level, in terms of achievable throughput        means automatically an increase of the achievable
and bandwidth utilization, is provided by the A-            throughput. Here, we prove that, for a given physical
MSDU frame aggregation mechanism which allows               data rate, the best achievable throughput in an IEEE
several MSDU frames to be transmitted with the              802.11ac WLAN is conditioned by an optimum A-
same PHY and MAC headers during one channel                 MPDU length. Before reaching this A-MPDU length,
access. Thereby, the overheads caused by the                there is a problem of overheads which harm the
PHY and MAC headers, inter-frame spacing and                throughput. But, after this value, there is an other
channel access time, are shared among several               problem which is the collision time that becomes
MSDU frames. This is why, by enabling the A-MSDU            more and more important with the increase of the
aggregation, the overheads are significantly reduced        A-MPDU length.
and the amount of transmitted useful data is highly
increased.                                                  In Figures 7 and 8, we illustrate the achievable
                                                            throughput by applying the A-MPDU aggregation
In Figures 6, 7 and 8, we analyze the achievable            scheme on IEEE 802.11ac network over 100 Mbps
throughput in an IEEE 802.11ac WLAN, by enabling            and 150 Mbps, respectively. We note on both Figures
the A-MPDU frame aggregation mechanism at MAC               7 and 8 that, the throughput increases with the
layer level, according to the number of MPDU frames         increase of the number of MPDU frames in an A-
in an A-MPDU frame (from 1 MPDU to 64 MPDUs),               MPDU frame, for both MPDU frame lengths 1000



                                                        5
                               Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
                                     Yazid • Bouallouche-Medjkoune • Aı̈ssani




Figure 7: Throughput versus A-MPDU length over a data       Figure 9: Throughput versus A-hybrid length over a data
rate of 100 Mbps.                                           rate of 100 Mbps.




Figure 8: Throughput versus A-MPDU length over a data       Figure 10: Throughput versus A-hybrid length over a data
rate of 150 Mbps.                                           rate of 200 Mbps.


bytes and 2000 bytes. The maximum achievable
throughputs with the maximum length of A-MPDU
frame (64 MPDU frames of 2000 bytes for each
of them) over the physical data rates 100 Mbps
and 150 Mbps, are respectively 71 Mbps and 104
Mbps. This significant improvement, in terms of
achievable throughput, is due to the collision time
of the A-MPDU frame which is significantly reduced
when using high data rates at the PHY layer level.
So, when the length of the MAC frame is large,
it is necessary to increase the data rate at the            Figure 11: Throughput versus A-hybrid length over a data
PHY layer in order to reduce the collision time and         rate of 300 Mbps.
consequently to improve the achievable throughput.
However, there is a limit that the physical data
rate should not exceed. Otherwise, the channel              frame. The achievable throughput is given for two
bandwidth will be less utilized because of temporal         MPDU frame lengths: 2000 bytes and 4000 bytes,
overheads. This why, with the physical data rate            and over three different physical data rates: 100
of 100 Mbps, the rate of bandwidth utilization is           Mbps, 200 Mbps and 300 Mbps.
71%. It is decreased to 69% with the physical data
                                                            From Figure 9, we note that, with a MPDU frame
rate of 150 Mbps. Therefore, for a given length of
                                                            length of 4000 bytes and over a physical data rate
MAC frame, there is an optimum physical data rate
                                                            of 100 Mbps, the maximum throughput of the hybrid
which reduces the collision time and minimizes the
                                                            frame aggregation is reached with 32 MPDUs. In
temporal overheads. Consequently, the achievable
                                                            Figure 10, we show that, although the physical
throughput is improved and the bandwidth utilization
                                                            data rate used is high (200 Mbps), the achievable
is enhanced.
                                                            throughput decreases when the number of MPDU
In Figures 9, 10 and 11, we evaluate the A-MSDU/A-          frames exceeds 48 frames. So, when the hybrid
MPDU hybrid frame aggregation scheme according              frame aggregation scheme is enabled at the MAC
to the number of MPDU frames in an A-MPDU frame,            layer level, it is required to employ the very high
where each MPDU frame encapsulates an A-MSDU                data rate available at the PHY layer level in order to
                                                            achieve a very high throughput in the IEEE 802.11ac



                                                        6
                                  Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
                                        Yazid • Bouallouche-Medjkoune • Aı̈ssani


WLAN. This is why, we note on Figure 11 that, over                IEEE Wireless Telecommunications Symposium
the physical data rate of 300 Mbps, the achievable                (WTS), pp. 1–7.
throughput does not decrease whatever the length
of the A-MPDU frame.                                            Bejarano, O., Knightly, E. W., Park, M. (2013)
                                                                  IEEE 802.11ac: From Channelization to Multi-User
                                                                  MIMO. In proceedings of IEEE Communications
                                                                  Magazine, pp. 84–90.
                                                                Bellalta, B., Barcelo, J., Staehle, D., Vinel, A.,
                                                                  Oliver, M. (2012) On the Performance of Packet
                                                                  Aggregation in IEEE 802.11ac MU-MIMO WLANs.
                                                                  IEEE Communications Letters, 16(10), 1588–
                                                                  1591.
                                                                Cha, J., Jin, H., Jung, B. C., Sung, D. K.
                                                                 (2012) Performance Comparison of Downlink User
                                                                 Multiplexing Schemes in IEEE 802.11ac: Multi-
Figure 12: Throughput variation according to the network
size.                                                            User MIMO vs. Frame Aggregation. IEEE Wireless
                                                                 Communications and Networking Conference
                                                                 (WCNC), pp. 1514–1519.
In Figure 12, we compare the maximum achievable
throughput by the different frame aggregation                   Charfi, E., Chaari, L., Kamoun, L. (2012) Upcoming
schemes in the IEEE 802.11ac WLAN according                      WLANs MAC Access Mechanisms: An Overview.
to the network size. Therefore, we have fixed the                In proceedings of IEEE 8th International Sympo-
physical data rate to 300 Mbps, and we have used                 sium on Communication Systems, Networks and
the maximum length of each frame aggregation                     Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP), pp. 1–6.
scheme. Through this figure, we show clearly that,
the hybrid frame aggregation scheme provides the                Charfi, E., Chaari, L., Kamoun, L. (2013) PHY/MAC
best bandwidth utilization and MAC efficiency in the             Enhancements and QoS Mechanisms for Very
IEEE 802.11ac WLAN over a physical data rate of                  High Throughput WLANs: A Survey. In proceed-
300 Mbps.                                                        ings of IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutori-
                                                                 als, pp. 1–22.

5. CONCLUSION                                                   Chung, C., Chung, T., Kang, B., Kim, J. (2013)
                                                                 A-MPDU Using Fragmented MPDUs for IEEE
In this paper, we are interested at presenting                   802.11ac MU-MIMO WLANs. In proceedings of
and studying the Frame Aggregation Mechanisms                    TENCON 2013-2013 IEEE Region 10 Conference
introduced in the IEEE 802.11ac standard for                     (31194), pp. 1–4.
very high throughput WLANs. Indeed, Frame
                                                                Cordeiro, C. (2013) The Pursuit of Tens of
Aggregation Mechanisms allow enhancing MAC
                                                                 Gigabits Per Second Wireless Systems Industry
efficiency and bandwidth utilization. The presented
                                                                 Perspectives. IEEE Wireless Communications
simulation results show that, the Frame Aggregation
                                                                 Magazine, 20(1), 3–5.
Mechanisms are required at MAC layer level for
reducing temporal overheads and consequently                    IEEE 802.11 ac Standard (2013) Wireless LAN
increasing the achievable throughput and bandwidth                Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer
utilization. However, when the length of the                      (PHY) specifications: Enhancements for Very High
aggregated MAC frame is very large, it is necessary               Throughput for Operation in Bands below 6 GHz.
to use a higher physical data rate in order to reduce
the collision time of this aggregated frame. Thereby,           Ismail, S. Z., Chavali, N. K. (2013) Impact of Spatial
we have identified, for the first time in the literature,         Expansion on Channel Estimation Accuracy in HT
the need to cross-layer communications between the                and VHT Wireless LAN Systems. In proceedings
PHY and MAC layers for accommodating the use of                   of IEEE International Conference on Advances
the different Frame Aggregation Mechanisms over                   in Computing, Communications and Informatics
the available physical rates.                                     (ICACCI), pp. 643–648.
                                                                Ong, E. H., Kneckt, J., Alanen, O., Chang, Z.,
REFERENCES                                                       Huovinen, T., Nihtila, T. (2011) IEEE 802.11ac:
                                                                 Enhancements for Very High Throughput WLANs.
Al-Adhami, M., Al-Dubai, A. Y., Romdhani, I. (2012)              In proceedings of IEEE 22nd International
  Experimental Investigation of Link Layer Adapta-               Symposium on Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio
  tion in IEEE 802.11n WLANs. In proceedings of                  Communications (PIMRC), pp. 849–853.



                                                            7
                               Performance Study of Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
                                     Yazid • Bouallouche-Medjkoune • Aı̈ssani


Redieteab, G., Cariou, L., Christin, P., Hélard, J.
  (2010) Cross-Layer Multichannel Aggregation
  for Future WLAN Systems. In proceedings of
  IEEE International Conference on Communication
  Systems (ICCS) pp. 740–745.

Redieteab, G., Cariou, L., Christin, P., Hélard,
  J. F. (2012) SU/MU-MIMO in IEEE 802.11ac:
  PHY+MAC Performance Comparison for Single
  Antenna Stations. In proceedings of IEEE Wire-
  less Telecommunications Symposium (WTS), pp.
  1–5.

Skordoulis, D., Ni, Q., Chen, H. H., Stephens,
  A. P., Liu, C., Jamalipour, A. (2008) IEEE
  802.11n MAC Frame Aggregation Mechanisms
  for Next-Generation High-Throughput WLANs. In
  proceedings of IEEE wireless Communications,
  pp. 40–47.

Wang, C. Y., Wei, H. Y. (2009) IEEE 802.11n
 MAC Enhancement and Performance Evaluation.
 Mobile Networks and Applications 14, 760–771.
Yazid, M., Ksentini, A., Bouallouche-Medjkoune, L.,
  Aı̈ssani, D. (2014) Performance Analysis of the
  TXOP Sharing Mechanism in the VHT IEEE
  802.11ac WLANs. IEEE Communications Letters,
  18(9), 1599–1602.

Yazid, M., Ksentini, A., Bouallouche-Medjkoune,
  L., Aı̈ssani, D. (2015) Enhancement of the
  TXOP Sharing designed for DL-MU-MIMO IEEE
  802.11ac WLANs. In proceedings of IEEE Wire-
  less Communications and Networking Conference
  (WCNC), pp. 908–913.




                                                       8