无线局域网MAC层QoS机制综述

A Survey of WLAN QoS MAC Schemes

无线局域网WLAN已成为当下日益流行的无线接入方案,但现有的WLAN协议对QoS的支持极其有限,致使多媒体、实时交互等QoS需求高的应用的实施难以实现。无线局域网MAC层是控制和协调无线节点访问网络介质的关键协议子层。如何在有限的网络资源和不稳定的物理介质前提下在MAC层提供有效QoS服务,成了无线网络研究界的一个新的课题。本文分析并总结了当前在无线局域网提供QoS的技术难点和主要的QoS提供策略,对现存的QoS提供机制从两个角度进行了分类和概括,最后指明了MAC层QoS研究的发展方向。

WLAN has become an increasingly important network access solution so far. But its limited support for QoS has prevented its wide deployment in QoS-demand applications such as multimedia and interactive applications. The MAC sub-layer is a critical protocol layer for WLAN, which controls and coordinates how wireless nodes access network media. Thus, what we can do to provide effective QoS support at MAC layer is an important research issue. In the light of recent QoS research on WI.AN at MAC layer, this paper summarizes the difficulties and principles of QoS provisioning for WLAN. Taxonomy of the existing QoS schemes is given which guides the analysis of various QoS protocols and mechanisms. Finally, this paper pointed out the research trend of QoS MAC schemes for WLAN.