Abstract
Technical reports indicate that wireless and mobile devices will account for 71% of all IP traffic by 2022, an increase of 19% over four years. This increase is related to advances in wireless data communication technologies. Wireless networks have become one of the most important ways to connect devices to the Internet, therein improving productivity and encouraging information sharing. IEEE 802.11, known as Wi-Fi, has become the main standard for wireless local area networks. The most important metrics for measuring the quality of Wi-Fi are delay, jitter, and packet loss. Packet loss occurs when one or more packets fail to reach their destination and can occur for a variety of reasons. Packet loss influences the user's perceived quality of applications over Wi-Fi networks, mainly multimedia and real-time applications. The availability of accurate models for packet loss in Wi-Fi networks enables the development of more efficient methods for performance analysis and network design, as well as better computational simulations. Modeling packet loss in such networks presents a major challenge because packets may be lost for many different reasons, including signal attenuation, noise, multipathing, signal refraction, thermal noise, competition for media access and buffer issues. In this paper, we provide an overview of the causes of packet loss and a comprehensive survey of the available models for packet loss in Wi-Fi networks. The potential benefits of the survey are: (i) the systematic presentation of available packet loss models for Wi-Fi networks, their parameters, and respective packet loss rate evaluation, (ii) comparison of models considering validation scenarios and input parameters, and (iii) description of open issues and future research directions. We hope that our analysis will help researchers understand the most important characteristics of the packet loss process in Wi-Fi networks and the strengths and weaknesses of the main packet loss models.
Highlights
IEEE 802.11 is a set of specifications for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs)
In wireless communication systems have resulted in substantial growth in the number of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, which in turn has facilitated the development of new, cheaper devices and applications with reduced power consumption [4]
The results indicated that the Gilbert model is not appropriate for small sample traces, and the Gilbert-Elliot model achieves better fitting to real packet loss sample traces [135]
Summary
IEEE 802.11 is a set of specifications for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Since 1997, when the IEEE 802.11 standard was released, it has been continuously upgraded to improve throughput, security, reliability and quality of service, among other functionalities [1]. The main causes of packet loss in Wi-Fi networks are low signal power, noise, interference, and multipath fading [10], [11]. Packet loss in Wi-Fi networks can have many causes, including physical and link layer problems. WPANs can adversely affect the performance of IEEE 802.11 g/n networks, as shown by Petrova et al [54] Another type of interference is known as pulsed interference and has been studied by Zarikoff and Leith [55], who proposed a technique to detect packet loss. It is expected that the increase in buffer size will improve the performance of the network by decreasing the packet loss rate This could lead to an increase in latency, which may impair the quality of services, e.g., real-time video streaming. Even when being studied mainly in the context of wired networks, persistently full buffers can deteriorate the fairness of rate allocation and increase the RTT in wireless networks [127]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
