Retransmission-based Available Bandwidth Estimation in IEEE 802.11-based Multihop Wireless Networks

Abstract

Estimating the available bandwidth in IEEE 802.11-based multihop wireless networks is a very difficult task due to the medium sharing among contending nodes and collisions between hidden stations. Several methods have been proposed so far for these networks to compute the available bandwidth on wireless links. If some recent solutions such as ABE and IAB now take into account collisions and their impact on the mean backoff, none considers the packet retransmissions due to collisions although these retransmissions have an impact on the available bandwidth. In this article, we propose a new available bandwidth estimation for multihop wireless networks called RABE (Retransmission-based Available Bandwidth). This method integrates the average number of retransmission attempts in the available bandwidth estimation. RABE is evaluated by simulation and the obtained results show that RABE can achieve a mean error ratio of 17% in comparison with the real measurement. Furthermore RABE is at least two times more accurate than ABE and ten times more accurate than IAB.