An Experimental Study of ARQ

Protocol in 802.11b Wireless LAN

Chung Ho Nam, Soung C. Liew, C

heng Peng Fu
Outline
 Introduction
 Background
 Details of experiments
 Conclusion
Introduction
 802.11b is becoming hot
 Previous studies are based on
simulations and old wlan technology
 Experimental approach was used in this
paper
Introduction
 2 main issues:
 Effectiveness of ARQ in 802.11b
 3 Experiments
 Loss behavior of 802.11b network

 2 more:
 Self-collision of TCP traffic
 Changes in collision rates due to

movements of mobile hosts

What is ARQ?
 Automatic Repeat reQuest
 Error control in data transmission
 3 common techniques:
 Stop and Wait
 Go back N
 Selective Repeat
 802.11b employs “Stop and Wait” at
link-layer
ARQ in 802.11b
 Stop and Wait
ARQ in 802.11b
 Stop and Wait
ARQ in 802.11b
 Not 100% reliable
 Only try at most (1 + 3) times in current
commercial products
 e.g. Orinoco, Buffalo

 Algorithm
 Skip
Why?
 Transmission error in air
 Channel noise
 Channel interference
 Packet collisions
 No direct collision detection in 802.11b
 TCP or UDP on top of 802.11b
 Misinterpret packet loss as congestion
loss (TCP)
Set-up for Experiments
Statistics from AP Manager
 Multiple Transmit Retry Count (MTRC)
 >= 2 retransmission attempts (successful)
 Transmit Retry Count (TRC)
 >= 1 retransmission attempts (successful)
 Transmit Failed Count (TFC)
 Still failed after 3 retransmission attempts
Experiment (I)
 Is ARQ adequate to compensate for packet lo
ss due to transmission error?
 Server: NetProbe
 Client: NetProbe
 Protocol: UDP
 Packet size: 1460 bytes
 Data rate: 500kbps
 Number of packets: 100,000
 Distance: 5m (best), 15m (good),
25m (marginal)
 Result of experiment (I)
Link quality Best Good Marginal
TRC 661 2322 18073
MTRC 16 1172 4030
TFC 10 264 760
Loss rate 0.01% 0.26% 0.76%

Loss rate = TFC / Total number of UDP packets

Result of experiment (I)
 Total number of unsuccessful transmission attempts
at layer 2
= Packets requiring exactly one retransmission to
succeed
+ 2 * Packets requiring exactly two retransmissions to
succeed
+ 3 * Packets requiring exactly three retransmissions to
succeed
+ 4 * Packets that fail to be transmitted successfully
(i.e., TFC)
Result of experiment (I)
= Packets requiring one or more retransmissions to
succeed (i.e., TRC) 1+2+3

+ Packets requiring two or more retransmissions to

succeed (i.e., MTRC) 2+3

+ 1 * Packets requiring exactly three retransmissions

to succeed 3
4+4+4+4
+ 4 * TFC

Let  be this
 Result of experiment (I)
TRC  MTRC    4 * TFC
Ploss 
num _ of _ packets  TRC    MTRC  4 * TFC

TRC  MTRC  4 * TFC


num _ of _ packets  TRC  MTRC  4 * TFC

Link quality Best Good Marginal

TRC+MTRC+4*TFC 717 4550 25143
Lower bound on loss rate 0.71% 4.35% 20.09%
Result of experiment (I)
Experiment (II)
 Is ARQ adequate to compensate for packet
loss due to packet collisions?
 Two-way traffic
 Protocol: UDP
 Packet size: 1460 bytes
 Data rate: 500kbps
 Number of packets: 100,000
 Distance: 5m (best), 15m (good),
25m (marginal)
 Result of experiment (II)
Link quality Best Good Marginal
TRC 1371 6951 16565
MTRC 231 3110 6030
TFC 7 1022 2038
Loss rate 0.007% 1.02% 2.04%
TRC 661 2322 18073
MTRC 16 1172 4030
TFC 10 264 760
Loss rate 0.01% 0.26% 0.76%
 Result of experiment (II)
TRC  MTRC  4 * TFC
num _ of _ packets  TRC  MTRC  4 * TFC

Link quality Best Good Marginal

TRC+MTRC+4*TFC 1630 14149 30747
Lower bound on loss rate 1.60% 12.40% 23.52%

Link quality Best Good Marginal

TRC+MTRC+4*TFC 717 4550 25143
Lower bound on loss rate 0.71% 4.35% 20.09%
Result of experiment (II)
TCP throughput VS Loss Prob.
BW=1.6Mbps, RT T =120ms, buffer size=12

200
Reno
Throughput(kBytes/s)

180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1.00E-05 1.00E-04 1.00E-03 1.00E-02 1.00E-01 1.00E+00

Packet loss rate

Implication of Experiment (II)
 Collision Probability Increases with
Distance
Interaction between transmission errors and
collision errors
 But “noise” and “interference” should be
independent
 More time is needed for transmission when
the data rate is low
 Wireless medium is much more occupied
 Probability of packet loss is higher
The Poor Pulling Down the Rich
 e.g.

 When A moves farther away from AP,

packet duration increases
 Less airtime for B
 Both A and B degrade
Experiment (III)
 Interactions between link-layer ARQ in
WLAN and transport-layer ARQ in TCP?
 Suiteserver and Suiteclient (like FTP)
 Protocol: TCP
 Packet size: 1460 bytes
 Data rate: Not restricted
 Total data size = 1460*100,000 bytes
 Distance: 5m (best), 15m (good),
25m (marginal)
 Result of experiment (III)

Link quality Best Best Good Good Margina Marginal

l
TRC 5804 5872 6563 7751 20747 16850
MTRC 891 785 1095 953 6546 4569
TFC 17 10 149 101 1588 698
Throughput 4883.4 4458.4 3579.9 4010.0 747.7 2315.4
(kbps)
> 5% of packets were retransmitted
Result of experiment (III)
 Recall: link-layer packets and ACKs DO
NOT collide
 TCP ACKs are regular link-layer packets
 Collide with packets from AP
 More experiments need to be done
Packet Loss Pattern in 802.11b
 Random Loss VS Bursty Loss
 Let p = total packet loss / total packet transmitted
= the overall loss rate of a link
 If packets losses are random, then the gap between t

wo successive packet losses follows the following pro

bability distribution:
 P = P [j next packets transmitted successfully befor
j
e the next loss] = p (1-p) j 
 In particular, if loss is random, P = p, whereas if los
0
s is bursty, P > p.
Experimental Evaluation
 Server: NetProbe
 Client: NetProbe
 Protocol: UDP
 Packet size: 1460 bytes
 Data rate: 500kbps
 Number of packets: 100,000
 Distance: 25m (marginal)
 p=0.0676

IDEAL

y=p(1-p)x
 p=0.0676

REAL
Conclusions
 One-way traffic
 No collision
 ARQ is effective in keeping the loss rate to
below 0.01
 Two-way traffic
 Collisions exist
 Loss rate may rise beyond 0.01
Conclusions
 Two possible improvements
 Strengthen the link-layer ARQ
 Modify TCP
 Two issues to be studied
 Self-collision in TCP
 Movements of clients
 Packet loss in 802.11b is not random