Cooperative packet scheduling via pipelining in 802.11 wireless networks

Abstract

The proliferation of 802.11a/b/g based wireless devices has fueled their adoption in many domains -- some of which are unforseen. Yet, these devices lack native support for some of the advanced features (such as service differentiation, etc.) required in specific application domains. A subset of these features relies on cooperative scheduling whereby nodes cooperate among each other to effectively manage resources such as power, throughput and interference in wireless networks. The trajectory of evolution in these devices has been primarily through new extension standards (such as 802.11e/s etc.) that offer support for these features. Plagued with long design cycles and cost overhead to upgrade, this process of upgrading creates an uphill task to users who want to use their wireless devices for different applications. In this paper, we argue that such cooperative scheduling extensions can be supported using a new layer on top of the existing MAC layer. We propose a 2½- pipeline architecture as a generic mechanism to create such domain specific extensions and propose two such protocols, SPARTA (power conservation) and ARGOS (throughput guarantees) over the native 802.11/b/g MAC layer.