Thwarting selfish behavior in 802.11 WLANs Articles uri icon

publication date

  • February 2016

start page

  • 492

end page

  • 505

issue

  • 1

volume

  • 24

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1063-6692

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1558-2566

abstract

  • The 802.11e standard enables user configuration of several MAC parameters, making WLANs vulnerable to users that selfishly configure these parameters to gain throughput. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed algorithm to thwart such selfish behavior. The key idea of the algorithm is for stations to react, upon detecting a misbehavior, by using a more aggressive configuration that penalizes the misbehaving station. We show that the proposed algorithm guarantees global stability while providing good response times. By conducting an analysis of the effectiveness of the algorithm against selfish behaviors, we also show that a misbehaving station cannot obtain any gain by deviating from the algorithm. Simulation results confirm that the proposed algorithm optimizes throughput performance while discouraging selfish behavior. We also present an experimental prototype of the proposed algorithm demonstrating that it can be implemented on commodity hardware.

subjects

  • Telecommunications

keywords

  • csma/ca; distributed algorithms; ieee 802.11; selfish behavior; wireless lan; optimal configuration; wireless networks; slotted aloha; game; information; equilibria; stability; nodes; users