Leveraging Pseudo-TDMA to a Controllable and

Bandwidth-efficient Village Area WiFi Networks

Xi Chen∗ , Zhenyu Chen∗† , Yaohui Wu‡
∗ Research
Center for Pervasive Computing, Institute of Computing Technology
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 100190
† College of Information Engineering, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, Hunan, China 411105
‡ Department of Electronics & Information Engineering, Zhejiang Wanli University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China 315100

Email: {chenxi01, chenzhenyu}@ict.ac.cn, yaohuinb@yahoo.com.cn

Abstract—The cost-effectiveness of WiFi makes it much at-
tractive for large residential area coverage that is potentially
competitive to DSL. Existing WiFi chipsets often implement
IEEE 802.11e CSMA/CA enhanced distributed channel access
(EDCA) function only, because the point coordination function
is seldom required in typical applications. To build a controllable
and bandwidth-efficient WiFi DSL, it not only means extending
communication range by enlarging RF power or using directional
antenna, but also needs a protocol enhancement at the MAC layer.
In this work, we propose a Pseudo-TDMA (pTDMA) controlled
access protocol over EDCA function, which was applied in our
village area WiFi network testbed. It can be implemented by
adding a software enhancement into the commercial off-the-shelf
chipsets. In addition to the stability and controllability inherent
to TDMA, simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol
has an obvious saturation throughput improvement over existing
IEEE 802.11e EDCA function when the packet size is big enough.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A wireless LAN, also known as WiFi, is a local area
wireless network with a typical communication radius of
about 100 meters. It is specified by the IEEE 802.11 series
of standards. The initial IEEE 802.11 specification used the
2.4 GHz frequency and supported a maximum data rate
of 2 Mbps. In late 1999, two new addenda were released.
The 802.11b specification increased the performance to 11
Mbps in the 2.4 GHz range while the 802.11a specification
utilized the 5 GHz range and supported up to 54 Mbps. The
incompatibility of IEEE 802.11b and a forced the creation
of the new standard known as 802.11g. The initial medium
access control (MAC) protocol, the IEEE 802.11-1999, can
be viewed as a wireless version Ethernet protocol. To provide
QoS, an IEEE 802.11e [1] was specified later in 2005. The
IEEE 802.11s is a new standard that is expected to be finalized
in 2008. In 802.11s, access points (APs) interconnected with
peer-to-peer wireless links create a backhaul infrastructure
called a wireless mesh network. These networks extend
service across large geographic areas, such as campuses or
metropolitan areas, facilitating expanded broadband wireless
applications. Wireless LAN is still under development, but
currently IEEE 802.11a/b/g/e compatible network interface
cards and APs are the mainstream wireless LAN products in
the market.
The main applications of wireless LAN are office, home,
and hotspot wireless internet connections. However, the IEEE
802.11 WiFi can also be used for the long distance. As is
believed, WiFi is going to become an integral part of hauling
three to ten miles without a great enhancement. Many rural
regions in developing and developed countries with low
user densities do not have good connectivity solutions. The
cost-effectiveness of WiFi encouraged quite some WiFi-based
networking trials toward long distance rural connectivity. The
WiFi-based Long Distance network (WiLDNet) [2] project is
one of them. The primary cost gains of WiLDNet arise from
the use of low cost and low power single board computers,
high-volume off-the-shelf 802.11 wireless cards originally
intended for industrialized markets and low cost towers. A
WiLDNet is comprised of point-to-point wireless links that
use high-gain directional antennas with line of sight (LOS)
over long distances (10-100km). Several WiLDNets have
been successfully deployed in India, Ghana, Guinea Bissau
and Philippines. Researchers in India also developed a MAC
protocol to increase the coverage area of WiFi mesh networks
[3-4]. The new protocol enables off-the-shelf WiFi radios
to form mesh networks with distances up to 40 kilometers
between their nodes.
The cost-effectiveness of WiFi also makes it much attractive
for large residential areas networks ranging from 300m to
3km. Currently more and more Chinese village residents
begin to have their own personal computers. In this work,
we firstly report our progress in WiFi application for village
area networks in China. The application requires us to build
a cost-effective, controllable, range extended WiFi network
that is potentially competitive to DSL. We then propose the
protocol designed for our village WiFi network testbed. It
is a Pseudo-TDMA (pTDMA) controlled access protocol
built on existing EDCA only cost-effective WiFi chipset. In
addition to the stability and controllability inherent to TDMA,
simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol has an
obvious saturation throughput improvement over existing
IEEE 802.11e EDCA when the packet size is big enough.
The proposed protocol and system is expected to be widely
used in China to solve the “last mile broadband Internet
access” problem.

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 II. T HE E XISTING M EDIUM ACCESS M ECHANISMS
A. The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols
The 802.11 standard specifies two medium access control
layer mechanisms: the contention based distributed coordina-
tion function (DCF) and the polling based point coordination
function (PCF). The DCF is based on carrier sense multiple
access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), which targets
at delivering classic data services. Using DCF all stations
have the same medium access priority and operate with the
same channel access parameters. The PCF is defined for time-
bounded services, compared to DCF, it’s more complicated
and requires central control. The IEEE 802.11e is a supplement
to the 802.11-1999 standard which enhances the issue of QoS
support in wireless LANs. The QoS facility of 802.11e defines
a new coordination function called hybrid coordination func-
tion (HCF). HCF supports two medium access mechanisms:
the contention-based channel access is referred to as enhanced
distributed channel access (EDCA), and the controlled channel
access is referred as HCF controlled channel access (HCCA).
B. The IEEE 802.11e EDCA
The EDCA is an extension of the DCF, which supports
QoS by introducing multiple access categories (ACs) in each
QoS station (QSTA). The EDCA allows each station to have
eight priority levels, which are in turn mapped to four access
categories (ACs), servicing different types of traffic. Each
AC has its own transmit queue and its own set of AC
parameters. The different values of AC parameters determine
the distinction in priority between AC. The most important
parameters include:
• Contention Window (CW) for a given AC : different AC
can have different values of minimum contention window
CWmin and maximum contention window CWmax. A
random number is drawn from this interval for the backoff
mechanism. A higher priority access category has a
smaller CWmin, thus has a higher probability to access
the channel.
• Arbitrary interframe space (AIFS): the minimum time
interval of each AC starts its backoff procedure between
the wireless medium becoming idle and the start of
transmission of a frame. Different AIFS are defined to
provide priority levels for access to the wireless media.
The AIFSN depends on the AC, typically set to not
less than 2 such that the shortest waiting time is DIFS.
SlotTime is determined by the used physical layer.
• TXOP Limit: If a transmission opportunity(TXOP) is
obtained using the contention-based channel access, it is
called an EDCA-TXOP. The TXOP Limit is the maxi-
mum duration for which a station can use the medium
for transmission .
When data arrives, the 802.11e MAC first maps the data
according to frame type to the appropriate AC, and then pushes
the newly arrived MSDU into the appropriate AC transmit
queue. MSDUs from different ACs contend for EDCA-TXOP
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internally within the QSTA. The winning AC would then
contend externally for the wireless medium.
C. The IEEE 802.11e HCCA
The HCCA is an extension of the legacy PCF. As a compo-
nent of HCF, it supports for parameterized QoS. The HCCA
mechanism is based on polling. When a station is polled, it is
allowed to transmit packets holding the channel up to TXOP
limit. The HCCA channel access is handled by a central node
called Hybrid Coordinator (HC), which is typically located
at the QoS access point (QAP) in infrastructure wireless
LANs. HC uses PIFS to gain control of the channel and
then allocates TXOPs to QSTAs. Unlike PCF, during both the
contention free period (CFP) and contention periods (CP) of
a superframe, the HCCA takes into account QSTAs’ specific
flow requirements in packet scheduling. An important concept
of HCCA is controlled access period (CAP), which is a
bounded time interval HC maintains control of the medium.
When the HC needs accessing the wireless mediaum (WM)
to start a CFP or a TXOP in CP, the HC shall sense the WM.
When the WM is determined to be idle for one PIFS period,
the HC shall transmit the first frame of any permitted frame
exchange sequence, with the duration value set to cover the
CFP or the TXOP. In HCCA mechanism, a QSTA sets up a
bandwidth request with the HC use the traffic specification
(TSPEC) signaling. The HC polls the QSTA, granting it a
TXOP, allowing it access to the medium in accordance with
the requirements furnished by the TSPEC. The QSTA makes
its transmissions during the granted TXOPs. The negotiation
is done with a TSPEC which contains parameters related to
their traffic flows, such as mean data rate, the maximum delay
allowed to transport a packet, maximum service interval, the
nominal size of a packet and the minimum physical bit rate
assumed by the scheduler for calculating transmission time.
They are exchanged between the QAP and the QSTAs to
establish a traffic stream.
III. T HE P ROPOSED P ROTOCOL
A. The rational
With the rapid development of Chinese economy, more and
more people in rural regions begin to own their personal
computers. Optical fibers are being widely deployed, bringing
high-speed connections to villages. The proposed protocol is
designed for village area WiFi network, as given in Fig. 1,
which extends broadband connections from optical endpoints
to the home of villagers.
Village area WiFi network requires a coverage radius from
300 meters to 3km, which is more than one order longer than
traditional WiFi. Field signal strength testing is conducted in
a village at the foot of MuTianYu part of the Great Wall. The
test setup is given by Table I and the result is listed in Table II.
As Table II indicated, even at the most far receiving point, the
signal is still quite strong. Per our observations, signal strength
above 50% is good enough for communications between AP
and stations.
2
 TABLE I
W I F I COVERAGE TESTING SETUP

AP
Item Value
WiFi Date Feb. 2, Feb. 28
station
Location BeiGou, Huairou district, Beijing, China
AP Tx power 500mw
AP height 15m
AP antenna 18dBi directional
Optical fiber
To Internet STA antenna 16dBi directional
STA RF cable 3m
Freq. 2.4Ghz
Fig. 1. A village area WiFi network Comm. Env. Plesio-LOS

diretional
TABLE II
RF cable
antenna W I F I COVERAGE TEST RESULT

WiFi node No. Distance(m) Direction() Strength(dBm) Quality(%)

(near window)
1 30 225 -52 100
2 50 -15 -50 98
3 100 -5 -68 92
CAT5 mains
4 150 -1 -76 86
Computer
power 5 200 0 -74 67
6 500 5 -62 100
7 1200 8 -58 100
8 500 185 -70 93
RJ45 9 1000 185 -72 91
10 100 90 -79 80
Fig. 2. The pTDMA enabled WiFi station

• The network shall be robust enough. Theoretically speak-

A village area WiFi network has the following technical
characteristics that make it different from traditional WiFi:
• The abuse of directional antennas result in many hidden
terminals. The hidden terminal problem can be solved
by RTS/CTS handshake to a great extend, but not com-
pletely. When there are too many hidden terminals, the
RTS collides quite often [5].
• The down link signal quality is better than the uplink due
to that AP has more powerful antenna and transmission
amplifier.
• The CSMA/CA is max-min fairness system. The soli-
darity property of feasible rate in such kinds of network
results in all flows receiving the rate of the worst flow,
leading to severe inefficiency. This is inherent to any
protocol that implements max-min fairness. An IEEE
802.11 b/g compatible network is a heterogeneous rate
system, which has a minimum rate of 1Mbps and a
maximum 108Mbps super G rate. If a faraway station’s
directional antenna is not properly installed, its auto
selected link rate may well be 1Mbps, which leads to the
total throughput of the whole network going down below
1Mbps. As suggested by literals [6], proportional fairness
of rates is more robust and achieves a better trade-off
between efficiency and fairness than the max-min.
In village area WiFi networks, the end users know nothing
about network protocols, but expect the network to provide
voice and standard Internet access. The followings are impor-
tant in a village area WiFi network from the users’ point of
view:
ing, the network should adopt proportional fairness. In
point to multipoint wireless networks, proportional fair-
ness translates to all stations having the same channel
access time.
• The channel time allocated to the stations can be under
control of the network administrator, in other words, the
network is controllable. In existing protocols, TDMA is
one of the best candidate.
• The end user device should be cost-effective. The HCCA
is a very comprehensive protocol set that supports ap-
plications such as VoIP, call signaling, streaming video,
transactional data, mission-critical data, etc. Per the au-
thors’ investigation, due to cost or time-to-market rea-
sons, currently few WiFi chipsets in the market support
HCCA, but all support IEEE 802.11e EDCA. Novel point
coordination function can be built on the EDCA, but the
timing requirement of any new protocols should not be
more stringent than the existing hardware and software
can provide. To facilitate implementation, the TDMA
protocol should require that AP switches the timeslot to
next station when the hardware time generated interrupt
is served. The gap between true time slot boundary and
the actual switch point varies from time to time.
B. The pTDMA over CSMA/CA
For the above facts and analysis, we propose a Pseudo-
TDMA MAC enhancement to the existing EDCA, which was
implemented in the village WiFi station (Fig. 2). The pTDMA
works as follows:

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 TABLE III
• The AP maintains a Pseudo-TDMA station (pSTA) list S IMULATION SETUP
and a non-pSTA list. They are initialized by the network
administrator or default to empty. When the AP detects Parameter Value
a new STA joining in the network, it adds it into the STA AC BE CWmin 15 slots
pSTA list. If a station in pSTA list never responses block STA AC BE CWMax 1023 slots
STA AC VO CWMin 7 slots
ACK request properly during a predefined time, it will STA AC VO CWMax 15 slots
be moved into non-pSTA station list. AC BE BTxOPLimit 3.008ms
• The channel time in a superframe is divided into con- AC VO BTxOPLimit 1.504ms
trolled access period (CAP) and contention period (CP). PHY Rate 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, 54, 108Mbps
During CP, all STAs access the channel using EDCA; Slot time 20us
During CAP, channel time is divided into timeslots al- STA AC BE AIFS aSIFS+ 3slots
AP AC BE AIFS aSIFS+3slots
located by the AP to the pSTAs in the pSTA list. The
STA AC VO AIFS aSIFS+2slots
allocation scheme is proportional fair. The administrator AP AC VO AIFS aSIFS+1slot
can modify the default timeslot allocation for adminis- PLCP header 20us(ERP-OFDM)
tration purpose. A timeslot is sub-divided into multiple SIFS 10us
downlink and uplink BTXOP pairs. During a BTXOP
pair, the AP first transmits the queued MPDUs to the
pSTA. When the maximum BTXOP duration is reached,
the AP transmits one block ACK request to the pSTA.
The receiving pSTA transmits a block ACK announcing
the start of uplink BTXOP. When the AP detects that
the timeslot allocated to the pSTA has timed out after
transmitting a uplink BTXOP block ACK, the AP begins
a downlink BTXOP with the next pSTA.
• A pSTA knows a CAP starting when a beacon is received.
When a STA receives a directed null MPDU from AP
or has just transmitted a block ACK, it will have a
burst transmission opportunity (BTXOP), in which it can
Fig. 3. Packet size distribution of Ethernet
continually transmit a burst of packets without contending
the channel before the maximum BTXOP duration is
reached. When a BTXOP times out, a STA can still send
the followings:
one block ACK request packet without backoff to AP
asking for one block ACK. When a STA has no packet • All nodes can hear each other thus preventing hidden

to transmit, it sends a null packet to AP.
• Whenever a packet was lost, retransmission of data
packet, block ACK request and block ACK would take
place during immediate next transmission opportunity,
either in CAP or next BTXOP.
• All MPDUs should be ACKed, either by block ACK or
terminal problems. This represent the best application
scenario for the IEEE 802.11e EDCA. Although the
performance of EDCA degrades with the increase of
hidden terminals, it is always hard to estimate the hidden
terminal number in a real village area WiFi network.
• The applications generate best effort traffic only.

packet-by-packet ACK. A MPDU marked as no-ACK is • The WiFi is often the extension of an Ethernet. Existing

expecting an ACK in the immediate next block ACK
packets. A request ACK packet always requests the
receiver to acknowledge the packets not ACKed until
now. When the queued MPDU number is 1, packet-by-
packet ACK is the preferred acknowledge mechanism.
• A pSTA does not access the channel with data packets
until it receives a broadcast null packet. If it never
receives any broadcast null packet, it will know that the
work shows that the Ethernet packets are mostly very
short packets or very long packets. As given by Fig. 3,
75% of all packets in the 13 most frequent sizes! Most
packets are either very long or very short. We carefully
selected the 1514-byte LLC packet size to represent the
very long and 64-byte LLC packet size to represent the
very short.
• No CP in the pTDMA and HCCA simulations. No CAP

AP is not a pTDMA-enabled AP.
• Piggyback is allowed to reduce control overhead. When
needed, AP can transmit ACK+null and block ACK+null
packets.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
The performance of networks are effected much by network
setup. Besides the parameters given by Table III, we assume
in the EDCA simulation. The interframe space is the
station voice category AIFS (Can not be set to SIFS at
least in the baseband chip used in pSTA), but contention
window size is zero.
We compared the saturation throughput performance of
the IEEE 802.11e EDCA and HCCA with the proposed
pTDMA over EDCA. The simulations result can be seen in
Fig. 4.

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 21 6.5
42
PHY rate=54Mbps,Pkt.Len=1514bytes PHY rate=24Mbps,Pkt.Len=154bytes PHY rate=54Mbps,Pkt.Len=64bytes
40 20

6.0
38 19

Saturation throughput

Saturation throughput

Saturation throughput
36 18
5.5
34
17

32
16
EDCA 5.0
EDCA
30 pTDMA EDCA
15
pTDMA
HCCA pTDMA
HCCA
28 HCCA
14 4.5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Node num. Node num. Node num.

(a) High rate, long packets (b) Low rate, long packets (c) High rate, short packets

Pkt. size=64 bytes,node num.=15 40 PHY. rate=54Mbps,node num=15

PHY rate=24Mbps,Pkt.Len=64bytes
5
36
6
32

Saturation throughput

Saturation throughput
Saturation througput

28
4
4 24

20

16
3 2 st_edca
EDCA st_tdma 12
st_edca
pTDMA st_hcca
8 st_tdma
HCCA st_hcca
4
2 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
Node num. PHY. rate Pkt. Size(byte)

(d) Low rate, short packets (e) S.T. wrt. rate (f) S.T. wrt. Pkt. size

Fig. 4. Saturation throughput comparisons of EDCA,HCCA and pTDMA

As given by Fig.4(a-d) and existing literals, the saturation function only, because the point coordination function is sel-
throughput of EDCA is significantly below its maximum dom used in typical WiFi applications. The proposed Pseudo-
because of the backoff channel time waste when there are TDMA furnishes the existing hardware by adding a software
few stations, but it increases rapidly with more stations. After enhancement layer. Simulation results show that the proposed
reaching its maximum, the saturation throughput of EDCA protocol obviously improves the saturation throughput over
degrades as more collisions happen with the increase of station existing IEEE 802.11e EDCA function when the MSDU is
number. The saturation throughput of pTDMA and HCCA long enough. Moreover, the proposed protocol provides a
decreases almost linearly as station number increases, because way for the network administrator to control the network by
the control overheads also increase linearly. allocating different channel time for each station according to
In the simulations, the pTDMA and HCCA networks have operating rules.
better saturation throughput than the EDCA network when the ACKNOWLEDGMENT
packet payload is 1514 bytes. But the EDCA exhibits a better
The authors would like to appreciate Mr. Zhenyu Chen and
saturation throughput in certain station number window when
Mr. Li Yang for rural WiFi experiment. The work is jointly
the packet size is 64 bytes. When the packet size is small, the
supported by the National High-Tech Research and Develop-
transmission time of a control packet is comparable with a
ment 863 Plan of China (2007AA01Z305) and Ningbo Natural
data packet, which makes a big overhead. As to EDCA, small
Science Foundation (2006A610009) and the knowledge inno-
packets means a smaller channel time wastage when collision
vation program of Institute of Computing Technology, CAS.
happens. For pTDMA to be more effective than EDCA, the
packet size should be bigger than (approximately) 450 bytes. R EFERENCES
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