Revisiting IEEE 802.11 backoff process modeling through information entropy estimation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a more accurate model, than many existing models, to evaluate the throughput performance of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. The proposed model is based on a novel approach to modeling the backoff process where the average backoff window size is measured through information entropy estimation. Our approach provides a better description of the backoff process as compared to some of the models available in the literature. The behavior of the proposed model is validated via simulations and compared against that of some known models across a wide range of settings.