1

QoS in IEEE 802.11-based Wireless Networks:

A Contemporary Survey
Aqsa Malik, Junaid Qadir, Basharat Ahmad, Kok-Lim Alvin Yau, Ubaid Ullah.

Abstract—Apart from mobile cellular networks, IEEE 802.11- requirements at a lower cost. In IEEE 802.11 WLANs, the
based wireless local area networks (WLANs) represent the error and interference prone nature of wireless medium—due
most widely deployed wireless networking technology. With the to fading and multipath effects [2]—makes QoS provisioning
migration of critical applications onto data networks, and the
emergence of multimedia applications such as digital audio/video even more challenging. The combination of best-effort routing,
arXiv:1411.2852v1 [cs.NI] 11 Nov 2014

and multimedia games, the success of IEEE 802.11 depends datagram routing, and an unreliable wireless medium, makes
critically on its ability to provide quality of service (QoS). A lot the task of QoS provisioning in IEEE 802.11 WLANs very
of research has focused on equipping IEEE 802.11 WLANs with challenging.
features to support QoS. In this survey, we provide an overview of
In this survey, we provide a focused overview of work
these techniques. We discuss the QoS features incorporated by the
IEEE 802.11 standard at both physical (PHY) and media access done to ensure QoS in the IEEE 802.11 standard. We have
control (MAC) layers, as well as other higher-layer proposals. We the following three goals: (i) to provide a self-contained
also focus on how the new architectural developments of software- introduction to the QoS features embedded in the IEEE
defined networking (SDN) and cloud networking can be used to 802.11 standard; (ii) to provide a layer-wise description and
facilitate QoS provisioning in IEEE 802.11-based networks. We
survey of techniques adopted for ensuring QoS in the IEEE
conclude this paper by identifying some open research issues for
future consideration. 802.11 networks; and (iii) to survey the applications of new
networking architectures—such as software defined networks
Index Terms—Quality of service (QoS), IEEE 802.11, wireless
networks.
(SDN) and cloud computing—for QoS provisioning in the
IEEE 802.11-based WLANs.
Contributions of this paper: A lot of research has been
I. I NTRODUCTION
conducted on the topic of QoS [3], including numerous
The IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networking (WLAN) surveys that have focused on the QoS problems for specific
standard defines one of the most widely deployed wireless wireless networks such as wireless sensor networks (WSNs)
technologies in the world. The popularity of wireless network- [4], wireless mesh networks (WMNs) [5], and IEEE 802.11-
ing is driven by the ubiquity of portable mobile hand-held based WLANs [6] [7] [8] [9]. Our work is different from the
devices, and the convenience of untethered communications. previous work in that we provide an updated account of QoS
With the increasing deployment of multimedia content on literature in IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks including a
the Internet—such as digital video, voice over IP (VoIP), discussion of recent architectural developments, such as cloud
videoconferencing, and multi-player networked games—along computing and SDN, that facilitate finer network management
with the deployment of time-sensitive critical applications, control, so we have reinvigorated the interest of the research
there is a strong motivation to develop QoS features to meet community in providing high QoS in IEEE 802.11-based
the more stringent performance requirements [1]. wireless networks. In addition to highlighting the QoS features
While the Internet and data networking models of the incorporated into the IEEE 802.11 networking standard, we
IEEE 802.11 WLAN technology, which are based on the also highlight different QoS approaches pertaining to different
datagram delivery model of IP, provide simple, adaptive and layers of the TCP/IP model.
fault resilient network, they are ill-suited to QoS provisioning.
The underlying datagram model of IP is a best-effort service— Organization of this paper: This survey is organized in
i.e., while the network tries to deliver packet to the destination the following way. In Section II, we provide a broad-based
correctly without any packet losses, it makes no guarantees. introduction on the general area of Internet QoS. In Section
Multimedia applications, in particular, need stronger guaran- III, we present the QoS features which are intrinsic to IEEE
tees about the minimum throughput and maximum latency to 802.111 for the physical (PHY) and the medium access control
work satisfactorily. An expensive solution for ensuring QoS is (MAC) layers. We provide an overview of the IEEE 802.11
to overprovision. Most of the Internet QoS effort has focused a/b/g and higher-throughput IEEE 802.11 standards (802.11
on how to get a network with less capacity meet application n/ac/ad) in Sections III-A and III-B. We follow this by a
discussion on MAC layer QoS features proposed in IEEE
Aqsa Malik, Basharat Ahmad and Ubaid Ullah are students at the School 802.11 in Section III-C. Apart from the QoS features that are
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS) at the National part of the IEEE 802.11 standard, various work has focused
University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan. Junaid Qadir is
an Assistant Professor at the Electrical Engineering Department of SEECS,
NUST. Kok-Lim Alvin Yau is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Science 1 We note here that the IEEE 802.11 standard directly addresses the PHY
and Technology, Sunway University, Malaysia and MAC layers only.
 2

on QoS improvement including work at the network layer TABLE I

(discussed in Section IV), the transport layer (discussed in ACRONYMS USED IN THIS PAPER .
Section V), the application layer (discussed in Section VI)
Acronym Expanded Form
as well as cross-layer work (discussed in Section VII). The
AMC Adaptive Modulating Scheme
promise of recent architectural developments, such as cloud APSD Automatic Power Save Delivery
computing and SDN, in enabling QoS, along with a survey ARQ Automatic Repeat reQuest
of proposed work, is provided in Section VIII. Thereafter, we ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode
BER Bit Error Rate
discuss some open research issues in Section IX. Finally, we BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying
provide concluding remarks in Section X. CAC Call Admission Control
CAP Control Access Period
CbWN Cloud-based Wireless Network
To facilitate the reader, acronyms used in this paper are CW Contention Window
collected in Table I as a convenient reference. DCF Distributed Coordination Function
DFS Distributed Fair Scheduling
DIFS DCF Interframe Space
II. I NTERNET Q O S—A B ROAD I NTRODUCTION DiffServ Differentiated Services
DSSS Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum
There has been a lot of work on Internet QoS, the bulk of EDCA Enhanced Distributed Channel Access
EDCF Extended DCF
which has focused on wired networks [10] [11]. While many EDD Earliest Due Date
of the ideas developed for Internet QoS are also applicable FEC Forward Error Correction
more broadly to wireless QoS, wireless networks do provide FHSS Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum
FCFS First-Come First-Served
some unique challenges motivating the development of new FIFO First In First Out
methods [12]. In this section, we provide a broad overview of HCF Hybrid Coordination Function
the abundant literature on Internet QoS. HCCA HCF Controlled Channel Access
IntServ Integrated Services
The original applications of the Internet—such as file trans- LTE Long-Term Evolution
fer and email—are elastic applications which are not bound MAC Media Access Control
by stringent performance requirements, and therefore match MDP Markov Decision Process
MPDU MAC Protocol Data Unit
well with the Internet’s datagram delivery model. The modern MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching
Internet world, which is full of multimedia applications, re- MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output
quires QoS guarantees that users have come to expect from the NUC Network Utilization Characteristic
OMAR Opportunistic Medium Access and Adaptive Rates
telecommunications networking world. To support multimedia OSAR Opportunistic Scheduling and Auto Rate
and other interactive/high performance applications, there is a PCF Point Coordination Function
need to support QoS features through QoS provisioning that PIFS PCF Interframe Spacing
PHB Per-Hop Behaviour
provides resource assurance along with service differentiation. PSTN Public Switched Telephone Network
Various techniques have been developed to facilitate QoS QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
provisioning, including (i) congestion control, (ii) admission QoE Quality of Experience
QoS Quality of Service
control, and (iii) traffic shaping and engineering. RTS Request To Send
In the remainder of this section, we study the problems SDN Software Defined Networking
of resource allocation and service differentiation, and will SIFS Short Interframe Spacing
SISO Single Input Single Output
introduce the techniques of admission control, congestion STA (Wireless) Station
control, scheduling, as well as traffic shaping and engineering SWN Software Defined Wireless Network
that can be used to facilitate QoS provisioning. TDM Time Division Multiplexing
TXOP Transmission Opportunity
VoIP Voice over IP
VM Virtual Memory
A. Resource Allocation WFQ Weighted Fair Queuing
WLAN Wireless Local Area Networking
Fundamentally, many QoS issues stem from the problem WRR Weighted Round Robin
of resource allocation. A computer network is composed WSN Wireless Sensor Network
of various resources—such as links of varying bandwidths,
routers with varying buffer sizes—that are shared by the
different network applications and users. Packet delays and focus only on the more important QoS framework proposals,
losses occur if the network resources cannot meet all the traffic namely IntServ and DiffServ.
demands. A network that supports QoS must actively manage
resource allocation to satisfy various users’ and applications’ 1) IntServ: IntServ performs per-flow resource reservation
demands. Without appropriate resource allocation, network for service differentiation. IntServ provides services on a per-
performance and service quality deteriorate rapidly under flow basis where a flow is a packet stream with common source
heavy load due to dropped packets and congestion. There are address, destination address and port number. In IntServ, a
two main architectural approaches to resource allocation in packet scheduler is used to enforce resource allocation to
the Internet: Integrated Services (IntServ) and Differentiated individual flows while supporting prioritization. The IntServ
Services (DiffServ). Apart from IntServ and DiffServ, other scheduler can be used to provide delay bounds. The delay
QoS frameworks have also been proposed [13]. We, however, bounds can be deterministic or statistical—for deterministic
 3

bounds, isolation or dedication of resources is required, while

statistical bounds can be provided when statistical multiplexing
[14] is used. There are two key IntServ abstractions, namely
Reserved Resources and Standard Resources. In the Reserved
Resource abstraction, the router must know the amount of re-
sources currently reserved for on-going sessions. The Standard
Resource abstraction includes the capacities of the links and
the router buffers, respectively. An example is Call Setup in
which buffers are kept at the routers. These buffers ensure a
specific amount of bandwidth is allocated to the flows at each
router [15] [16] [17] [18].
2) DiffServ: DiffServ, on the other hand, performs per-class
resource reservation for service differentiation, and makes
use of prioritization, multiple forwarding classes, and edge
policing to categorize traffic into different classes; and the
traffic is treated according to its respective classes. The edge
routers are responsible for the complex operations in the
network; while the core routers perform simple and easy Fig. 1. Taxonomy of QoS metrics (adapted from [27] and [28]).
computations. The packet-handling rule in DiffServ is termed
as Per-Hop Behaviour (PHB). In other words, each network
device along a path behaves in a certain way in which a
require high bandwidth. Similarly, the delay requirements
specific group of packets have the same priority value. The
also differ with the type of application. Some applications,
PHB rule decides whether a packet needs to be forwarded or
such as email, are not delay-sensitive. However, interactive
dropped depending on the QoS-based precedence value of the
applications, such as web browsing, videoconferencing and
packet. However, the framework is very complex and cannot
live streaming, have more stringent delay requirements. The
be applied to heterogeneous networks [19] [20] [21]. DiffServ
variation in the packet arrival time within a stream of packets
has been used for implementing QoS in various IEEE 802.11-
is called jitter. Email, file sharing and remote login are not
based wireless networks such as [22] [23].
affected by jitters in the network traffic; while real-time appli-
cations, audio and video do. The loss of packets in the case of
B. Service Differentiation audio and video is not of significance. The other applications,
Service differentiation is used to support multiple services as discussed previously, cannot tolerate an increased packet
with diverse requirements—such as interactive delay-sensitive loss rate in transmissions [29]. In this work, we will focus
services along with elastic delay-tolerant file transfer services mostly on the QoS parameters of delay, throughput, and
[24]. The overprovisioning of network resources is not always guaranteed bandwidth.
possible in radio networks, thus making service differentiation
an integral component of most QoS-based solutions. In service
differentiation, several parameters (e.g., packet deadline) can C. Admission Control
be modified to define how a flow should access the wireless One way of supporting QoS is through admission control—
medium [4]. A variety of services can be provided by the use in which new sessions are allowed onto the network only if
of simple network parameters deployed in network nodes, and sufficient resources are available to provide service to the new
these services can be classified according to a large number and existing sessions [30]. The interest in the field of admis-
of characteristics [25]. The QoS of the system is enhanced sion control, has been driven by the idea that regulation of
by differentiating the priority of each host and offering them incoming traffic flows prevents network congestion, and helps
different levels of QoS parameters. in ensuring QoS. Call Admission Control (CAC) is a traffic
Service requirements are often application-specific. For management system employed in public switched telephone
example, certain applications are delay-sensitive (e.g., voice networks (PSTNs) [31]. The CAC scheme is easy to imple-
conferencing which is sensitive to round-trip delay), while ment because of the homogeneous environment. However, the
others are concerned more with average transmission rate (e.g., present networking environment of homogeneous network is
bulk file transfer). Service requirements are often expressed not preserved. Hence, the admission control function is more
using metrics (i) bandwidth, (ii) delay, (iii) jitter, and (iv) loss challenging in heterogeneous networks (e.g., joint WLANs and
rate. A more comprehensive, but still non-exhaustive, listing IP networks) [32]. A new flow request is admitted only if
of QoS metrics is displayed in Figure 1. To accommodate the the ongoing flows are not negatively affected. The common
impact of these metrics, the network must support multiple parameters used for admission control are peak bandwidth
QoS strategies to support different applications [26] [11]. requirement and the average rate [9]. Therefore, the task of
The bandwidth requirements of different applications are admission control is to maximize resource utilization in the
different. Some applications, such as email, remote login and network, and to control the amount of traffic to achieve the
audio, require less bandwidth, while video and file transfers predefined performance objectives of the current flows.
 4

Hou et al. [33] have presented a formal theory of QoS scale [9]. In order to achieve QoS guarantees, decisions on
provisioning in unreliable wireless networks, such as the IEEE buffering and forwarding must be performed quickly. Traffic
802.11-based wireless networks, which subsumes a framework engineering is the process that maximizes network utilization
for jointly addressing three important QoS criteria, namely through careful distribution of network resources [3]. Most of
delay, delivery ratio, and channel reliability. They also propose the Internet backbones currently rely on label switching by
algorithms and policies for admission control and scheduling adopting ‘multi protocol label switching’ (MPLS) technology.
that can be implemented in IEEE 802.11-based networks. The The purpose of label switching is to enhance the scope of
authors analytically develop necessary and sufficient condi- traffic engineering, QoS provisioning and overlay networks
tions to satisfy these three criteria. More details of admission [37]. The traffic shaping mechanism for the IEEE 802.11
control techniques in the context of IEEE 802.11 standard are standard is defined in Section III-C.
described later in Section IV.
III. Q O S S UPPORT IN IEEE 802.11
D. Congestion Control Standards in the IEEE 802 project target the PHY layer and
Congestion control in the modern Internet is typically the MAC layer. While IEEE 802.3 defines the PHY and MAC
performed using the TCP protocol [34]. Congestion in a layers for wired LANs; the prominent IEEE 802.11 standard,
network may occur if the number of packets sent to the which is the focus. The first IEEE 802.11 specification was
network is greater than the number of packets a network published in 1997, and it has undergone numerous subsequent
can handle. Congestion control refers to the techniques to amendments. The IEEE 802.11 working group has various
control the congestion level and keep the load below the task groups focusing on a myriad of niche concerns with an
capacity. In the QoS-integrated services, the congestion control elaborated description of the IEEE 802.11 universe provided
mechanism should be different for different kinds of sources: in [38]. The focus of the various task groups is summarized
e.g., file transfer/ email is different from real-time voice/video in tabulated form in Tables II and III.
applications [35]. The QoS enabled routers provide services to Providing QoS services in applications using traditional
certain flows based on their requirements. Congestion control IEEE 802.11 standards is difficult since they provide no
helps to provide priority differentiation of flows by servicing explicit mechanisms for service differentiation. Various pa-
queues in different manners (e.g., the order in which the flows rameters extracted from the general traffic layout are used to
are serviced). ensure acceptable QoS in these networks, such as goodput—
which is the measure of packet arrival rate during a fixed
period of time; load level—which indicates the usage of a
E. Scheduling medium on per time basis; and available bandwidth—which
Scheduling is the key to share network resources fairly measures the rate at which new flows can send traffic without
among users in a network, and it provides service guarantees affecting the existing flows in the network [39] [40]. The
to time-critical applications. The scheduler first decides the legacy standards only have the basic distributed coordination
order of requests to be served, and then it manages the function (DCF) and the optional point coordination function
queues of these awaiting requests. The scheduling scheme is (PCF) enhancements, such as collision avoidance and a first in
important for the networks because there are two types of first out (FIFO) scheduler [41]. Even with the contention-free
applications. One is insensitive to the performance that users PCF, the QoS problem could not be solved. Consequently,
receive from the network, and the other has a strict bound on the services provided to the users do not have optimal per-
the performance. The scheduling can provide different services formances for various applications including audio and video
to the flows using parameters such as different bandwidths— applications during heavy network loads [42]. In Section III-D,
by serving only a single flow at a particular interval; different we present the IEEE 802.11e standard, which provides MAC
mean delays—according to the level of priority defined for layer enhancements for QoS, that incorporates traffic priority
the flow; and different loss rates—by assigning more or fewer and queueing to enable service differentiation among the flows
buffers to the flows [36]. The scheduling mechanism adopted [43].
in the IEEE 802.11 standard is explained in detail later in
Section III-C. A. QoS Support in IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n
The IEEE 802.11 has evolved in different eras to satisfy
F. Traffic Shaping and Engineering differing requirements of applications [44] [45]. The IEEE
Traffic in data networks is bursty in nature. Traffic shaping is 802.11a standard is part of the original IEEE 802.11 standard,
a technique for handling the bursty nature of the traffic entering and it operates in the 5 GHz range with a data rate of 54
a network through controlling and allocating appropriate levels Mbps while supporting the frequency hopping spread spec-
of network bandwidth [29]. The goal is to regulate average trum (FHSS) and direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS).
traffic rate and reduce congestion. The traffic shaping is Unfortunately, due to the use of high frequency spectrum, the
performed at the boundary nodes. These nodes have classifiers technique of DSSS faced the problems of short transmission
that mark the flows according to their service requirements. range and interference [46]. To address this problem, IEEE
The mechanisms of traffic management can be classified 802.11b, which is also based on DSSS technology, operates
in a number of ways [3]. One possible criterion is time in the 2.4 GHz spectrum with a data rate of 11 Mbps. The
 5

TABLE II
T HE IEEE 802.11 S TANDARD TASK G ROUPS W ITH C OMPLETED S PECIFICATIONS .

Task Title Status Comment

Group
802.11a Higher Speed PHY Extension in the 5 Completed; published as Defines a PHY to operate in the UNII band.
GHz Band IEEE Std. 802.11a-1999
802.11b Higher Speed PHY Extension in the 2.4 Completed; published as Supports a higher rate PHY in the 2.4 GHz band.
GHz Band IEEE Std. 802.11b-1999
802.11d Operation in Additional Regulatory Do- Completed; published as Allows devices to comply with regional requirements.
mains IEEE Std. 802.11-2007
802.11e MAC layer enhancements for QoS Completed; published as Enhances the IEEE 802.11 MAC to improve and manage QoS.
IEEE Std. 802.11-2007
802.11g Further Higher Data Rate Extension in Completed; published as Provides higher speed PHY extensions to the IEEE 802.11b standard.
the 2.4 GHz Band IEEE Std. 802.11-2007
802.11h Spectrum and Transmit Power Manage- Completed; published as Defines dynamic frequency selection (DFS) and transmitter power control
ment Extensions in the 5 GHz Band IEEE Std. 802.11-2007 (TPC) for the purposes of efficient spectrum sharing and energy consumption.
802.11i MAC Security Enhancements Completed; published as Enhances IEEE 802.11 MAC to provide security, privacy and authentication
IEEE Std. 802.11-2007 mechanisms by improving the wired equivalent privacy (WEP) protocol.
802.11j 4.9 GHz Operation in Japan Completed; published as Operates in the 4.9 to 5 GHz band to conform to the Japanese radio
IEEE Std. 802.11-2007 regulations.
802.11k Radio Resource Management Completed; published as Provides interfaces to higher layers for radio resource management and
IEEE Std. 802.11-2012 network measurements.
802.11n Enhancements for Higher Throughput Completed; published as Provides improvements to the IEEE 802.11 standard to provide high through-
IEEE Std. 802.11-2012 put (greater than 100 Mbps).
802.11p Wireless Access in Vehicular Environ- Completed; published as Provides car-to-car communication, with the aim to enhance the mobility and
ments (WAVE) IEEE Std. 802.11-2012 safety of all forms of surface transportation, including rail and marine.
802.11r Fast Roaming/Fast BSS Transition Completed; published as Provides continuous connectivity, as well as fast and seamless hand-off across
IEEE Std. 802.11-2012 wireless devices in motion.
802.11s WLAN Mesh Networks Completed; published as Enhances the IEEE 802.11 standard to support wireless mesh networking
IEEE Std. 802.11-2012 (WMN).
802.11u Interworking with External Networks Completed; published as Provides convergence to IEEE 802.11 and GSM by allowing multi-mode
IEEE Std. 802.11-2012 phones to join an IEEE 802.11 WLAN.
802.11v Wireless Network Management Completed; published as Extends the IEEE 802.11 PHY and MAC layers to provide network manage-
IEEE Std. 802.11-2012 ment for STAs.
802.11w Protected Management Frames Completed; published as Defines security mechanisms for management frames.
IEEE Std. 802.11-2012
802.11y Contention-based Protocol Completed; published as Provides contention-based protocols for operation in the 3.65 GHz band in
IEEE Std 802.11y-2008 the USA.
802.11z Extensions to Direct Link Setup Completed; published as Provides an AP-independent direct link setup.
IEEE Std 802.11z-2010
802.11aa Video Transport Stream Completed; published as Defines various MAC enhancements for robust audio video streaming.
IEEE Std 802.11z-2010
802.11ac Very High Throughput WLAN Completed; published as Provides high throughput (greater than 1 Gbps) operation in bands below 6
IEEE Std 802.11ac-2013 GHz.
802.11ad Very High Throughput WLAN operat- Completed; published as Provides high throughput (greater than 1 Gbps) operation in 60 GHz band.
ing in 60 GHz IEEE Std 802.11ad-2012
802.11ae Prioritization of Management Frames Completed; published as Defines mechanisms for prioritizing IEEE 802.11 management frames using
IEEE Std 802.11ae-2012 existing mechanisms for medium access.
802.11af Wireless LAN in the TV White Space Completed; published as Defines legal requirements for channel access and coexistence in the TV
IEEE Std 802.11af-2013 white space.

802.11b standard is not backward compatible with the IEEE B. QoS Support in High Throughput IEEE 802.11 (802.11
802.11a standard. The IEEE 802.11g standard—operating at n/ac/ad)
2.4 GHz with a data rate upto 54 Mbps—is introduced for To support the need of high throughput wireless networking,
backward compatibility with the IEEE 802.11a standard. various IEEE 802.11 standards have been proposed in recent
time such as the 802.11n, 802.11ac, and 802.11ad standards.
QoS limitations of IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n: In the DCF-based The IEEE 802.11n standard is based on the multiple input
schemes, the access to the medium is given on first come multiple output (MIMO) technology, and it offers a high
first served (FCFS) basis. This creates some fairness prob- data rate of upto 600 Mbps. The IEEE 802.11ac standard
lems, which can potentially result in flows being deprived of aims to support an even higher data rate of 1 Gbps, while
their fair bandwidth share. There is no proper mechanism to IEEE 802.11ad standard aims at achieving a rate upto 7 Gbps
distinguish between the flows on priority basis in the PCF- exploiting the wideband channels available in the 60 GHz
based environments. The legacy standards of IEEE 802.11 band. These new standards incorporate scheduling mecha-
a/b/g/n have no standard mechanisms to ensure QoS [47] [48]. nisms, call admission control algorithms, and PHY and MAC
Because these standards do not incorporate admission control, layer enhancements for supporting multimedia applications
performance degradation occurs during heavy traffic load. with QoS. The interested reader is referred to a comprehensive
 6

TABLE III
T HE IEEE 802.11 STANDARD active TASK GROUPS .

Task Title Status Comment

Group

802.11m IEEE 802.11 Standard Mainte- Active; published as Provides maintenance for the IEEE 802.11 standard by rolling published amendments
nance and Revision IEEE Std 802.11-2012 into revisions of the IEEE 802.11 standard.

802.11ah Operation in Sub 1 GHz Frequen- Active Supports applications that benefit from range extension, such as smart meters.
cies

802.11ai Fast Initial Link Set-up Active Reduces time for a WLAN client to securely setup an association in less than 100ms.

802.11aj Very High Throughput Active Operates in the millimeter-wave bands in China.

802.11ak Enhancements for Transit Links Approved Provides protocols and procedures to enhance the ability of IEEE 802.11 media
Within Bridged Networks (December 2012) through bridging by using IEEE 802.1 mechanisms across an IEEE 802.11 link.

802.11aq Pre-association Discovery (PAD) Approved Defines modifications to the IEEE 802.11 standard, including layers above the PHY
(December 2012) layer, in order to enable delivery of pre-association service discovery information by
IEEE 802.11 stations.

802.11ax High-efficiency Wireless LAN Approved Improving spectrum efficiency, area throughput and real world performance in indoor
(March 2014) and outdoor deployments.

study of QoS support in very high throughput IEEE 802.11 TABLE IV

architectures (IEEE 802.11 n/ac/ad) presented in [49]. P RIORITY L EVELS C ORRESPONDING T O VARIOUS A PPLICATIONS T YPES
F OR S UPPORTING P RIORITY Q UEUEING IN IEEE 802.11.

C. MAC layer QoS Features for IEEE 802.11 Priority 802.1 D User 802.11e Access Description
Priority Category (AC)
In general, the major techniques used for ensuring QoS at Lowest 1 AC BK Background Traffic
the MAC layer include admission control and scheduling. In 2 AC BK Background Traffic
0 AC BE Best Effort
the IEEE 802.11 standard, the MAC layer provides the func- 3 AC BE Best Effort
tionality of addressing, framing, reliability check, and access 4 AC VI Video
5 AC VI Video
coordination to the wireless medium [50]. The MAC layer with 6 AC VO Voice
QoS enhancements aims to provide the network with a much Highest 7 AC VO Voice, Network Management
reduced overhead, segregating frames on the priority basis,
and keeping the collisions to the least possible level. This
section describes the techniques implemented in the legacy priorities queues. The highest level or the seventh level has the
IEEE 802.11 standard. The rest of this subsection presents a highest priority and it is assigned to the most critical appli-
description of the QoS-focused IEEE 802.11e standard. cations. The next two levels, i.e. levels 5 and 6, correspond
The wireless systems can be configured in two different to delay-sensitive video and audio applications. Levels 4 and
modes in the IEEE 802.11 architecture: (i) the ad-hoc mode, below are used for regular data traffic, as well as streaming
and (ii) the infrastructure mode. The infrastructure mode video. Level 0 is left for the traffic that can tolerate all the
has multiple stations that can communicate with each other deficiencies of the best-effort service [54].
through an access point (AP), where the APs have connectivity 2) Differentiated Services: The QoS enhancements can also
with a wired network at the backend. While in the ad- be classified in the terms of the DCF-based or the PCF-based
hoc mode, the stations can communicate directly with each enhancements. Figure 2 provides a taxonomy of DCF- and
other without any intervening access points or a backend PCF-based enhancements [55] for both priority queueing and
wired network. The IEEE 802.11 has two medium access differentiated services.
coordination functions, namely the DCF and the PCF.
Various kinds of QoS enhancement techniques have been We initially discuss four main techniques for deploying
proposed for the IEEE 802.11 standard [51] [52] [53], and differentiated services using DCF:
they are explained in the rest of this subsection.
• Distributed Fair Scheduling: For good performance of a
1) Priority Queueing: This method is used to provide system, it is not a fair practice to retrict the services of
priority queues at the MAC layer where data packets are low-priority traffic and to provide better services to high
segregated on the basis of priorities. Whenever a particular priority traffic. One way is to assign more bandwidth
station has access to the channel, it transmits the one which has to the high priority traffic in comparison to the low
the highest priority among the queued packets. All the stations priority traffic. Distributed fair scheduling (DFS) is a
must contend with each other for access to the medium. technique used in this respect. In this technique, each flow
Priority queueing is done in a way that there are eight is assigned some weight depending on its priority and
different levels of priority, and therefore eight different queues the bandwidth it gets is then proportional to this weight.
must be maintained. Table IV shows the classification of these This is a centralized technique in the sense that it uses a
 7

Fig. 2. MAC layer QoS enhancement schemes for IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks (described in Section III-C).

central AP, which has the information regarding all the is maintained in each station [58]. In some cases, when
traffic flows from different stations, and can therefore the packet size is greater than the maximum limit, the
assign different weights to each of these flows. This packets are fragmented. These fragments are sent without
technique thus differentiates among all the traffic flows any RTS in between, waiting just for the reception of
going through the AP [56]. corresponding ACKs. These mechanisms provide us with
The DFS scheme uses the backoff mechanism of IEEE the same data rates as those without fragmentation [57].
802.11 to decide the transmission order of each station.
• Blackburst: The blackburst scheme imposes certain con-
When the transmission starts, each station chooses a
straints on high priority flows rather than the low priority
random backoff time. This backoff interval is a function
flows which has been considered until now [59]. In this
of packet length and the priority of the flow. The stations
technique, every station gets access to the medium for a
with low priority flows have longer backoff intervals than
fixed interval of time [60]. Once the station gets access to
the stations with high priority flows. Using packet size
the medium, it jams the medium for a certain duration.
in the backoff calculation ensures fairness amongst the
Consider a station that has higher priority than others,
stations, resulting in smaller packets being sent more
and it has data packets to transmit, so it senses the
often. In the case of a station experiencing a collision,
channel. Once it detects the channel has been idle for
the new backoff interval is generated using the same
PIFS amount of time, it has the potential to transmit its
algorithm.
frames. Hence, after waiting for a PIFS amount of time, it
• Varying DIFS: Another solution is to vary the distributed enters a blackburst contention period. A jamming signal,
inter-frame spacing (DIFS) duration for differentiation which is called blackburst, is then sent by this station to
among flows [25]. For example, we know that the ACK jam the channel. The length of this blackburst signal is
packet in the IEEE 802.11 standard gets higher priority proportional to the amount of time a particular station
than RTS packets, due to the fact that ACK packet waits must wait before getting access to the medium. After
short inter-frame spacing (SIFS) amount of time, while the station has transmitted its blackburst signal, it again
RTS packet waits DIFS amount of time, which is much listens to check if any other stations are also sending a
longer. The same idea can be taken to the data frames; blackburst signal. The length of this blackburst signal is
in which each flow’s priority is set with a different DIFS compared to check whether it is longer or shorter than its
duration. To avoid collisions, a backoff time is maintained own. Subsequently, the station with the longest blackburst
similarly in these packets as well. Such technique is much shows that it has been waiting for a longer amount of
beneficial in real-time applications, where delays have a time to access the channel, hence it is the next station
greater significance compared to packet loss [57]. to access the channel. This technique is similar to how
TDM shares the same medium among the different flows,
• Differentiated Maximum Frame Length: In this approach,
and it is used in real-time traffic and synchronization [8].
service differentiation is achieved in a way that different
stations can transmit frames with different maximum
We next discuss two techniques for offering differentiated
frame sizes. The stations with high priority flows can
services using PCF:
transmit a larger frame than the one with the lower
priority flows. To ensure this, there are two mechanisms:
• Distributed TDM: This mechanism uses a polling method
either the packets that exceed the maximum frame size
as in the regular PCF mechanism, but time slots are also
are discarded or an upper bound on the size of packets
defined as in the TDM approach, and each of these time
 8

slots is assigned to a specific station. Once these time [71] [72].

slots are assigned, each station knows when to transmit, In [73], a HCF-based packet scheduler is designed and
and thus transmission of packets can be done with a very implemented with special reference to the IEEE 802.11e
little involvement of the AP [57]. standard. This design caters both the constant bit rate and
variable bit rate of the QoS-sensitive traffic and provides
• Hybrid Coordination Function: Hybrid coordination
bandwidth support and smaller delays to all network flows.
function (HCF) is a new coordination function proposed
The QoS scheduling provides guaranteed services taking into
in IEEE 802.11e to enhance both DCF and PCF. HCF
consideration the bit rate, delay, throughput, etc. The general
uses two methods: the first method is contention-based
algorithms that ensure QoS in scheduling are: (i) strict priority;
and it is known as enhanced distributed channel access
(ii) weighted fair queueing (WFQ); (iii) weighted round robin
(EDCA), and the second method is contention-free and
(WRR); and (iv) earliest due date (EDD).
it is known as HCF-controlled channel access (HCCA).
HCF uses the AP as a traffic manager which is termed as a) Strict Priority: In this algorithm, the buffer is parti-
the hybrid coordinator (HC) [61], which is a centralized tioned into a number of different queues, which is equal to
coordinator. The HC negotiates the exchange of frames the number of different priority flows. The packets are then
and the frame handling rules given in HCF. The HC is stored in these queues by the scheduler according to their own
located within the range of AP and works both in the priority levels. The flows in the same queue are then sent
contention-based and contention-free periods. The traffic using the FIFO scheme. The strict priority algorithm is easy
is composed of wireless station (STA) “streams” or pipes, to implement but it does not guarantee any bit rate and losses.
with each STA stream associated with a set of QoS Moreover, the lower priority flows may have a zero-valued
parameters [62] negotiated with the AP. The AP uses throughput. In [74], [75], and [76], a network calculus method
a polling method to control the traffic. It sends polling is used to evaluate the performance of a switch as it provides a
packets to the stations. When a station is polled, it replies good model of packet exchanges, and it determines end-to-end
to the poll in a frame that contains the response and the delay. Note that, the strict priority scheduling is implemented
data to be transmitted. In this method, the polling is based in Ethernet switches. A slight modification to the strict priority
upon the priority on which QoS has to be ensured [63]. algorithm is proposed in [77], where the different flows are
The various techniques for service differentiation covered in assigned with different parameters. The technique is important
this section are summarized in Table V along with their main in the per-hop behaviour of differentiated services network.
features and advantages.
b) Weighted Fair Queueing: The same idea of assigning
3) QoS Scheduling: A priority scheduler always selects each flow with a certain priority is used, however the queues
packets from a queue with the highest priority. Such an are not served on FIFO. Each flow is assigned a specific weight
approach is simple to understand, but can unfortunately lead to according to the QoS requirements [78]. Hence, the bit rate
starvation of lower priority packets, particularly when there is varies with each flow. A certain upper bound on the buffer size
a steady flow of high priority packets. There are also deadline- is implemented to give all the flows a share of the bandwidth,
based and rate-based scheduling schemes. which is unlike to what we have seen above. An interleaved
The process of QoS scheduling in the IEEE 802.11 standard WFQ scheme is implemented in [79], where a table specifies
chooses packets amongst the various flows and distributes the queue sequence. The table is interleaved, so higher priority
them on to specific links depending upon the requirements flows are visited more frequently. The scheme improves on
of each flow. This distribution of flows on each link has to latency and jitter which are associated with the traffic queues.
be done within a small time interval and should be hardware- In [80], the WFQ scheme that is backward compatible with
friendly. Scheduling is designed to provide a better throughput the IEEE 802.11 standard is discussed. The simulation results
while reducing transmission times—throughput and delay be- show that the scheme can provide appropriate bandwidth
ing the key metrics quantifying better QoS. Resource reserva- distribution even in the presence of flows that need to be
tion for different traffic flows requires synchronization among transmitted at all times.
nodes to effectively monitor the changes in resource adaptation
c) Weighted Round Robin: Weighted round robin is a
[66]. For such kind of insurances, we need to have a real-time
frame-based implementation of WFQ. The flows are segre-
monitoring mechanism for the changing network environment.
gated similarly in separate queues with a specific weight
The scheduler is generally operating at the MAC layer of the
assigned to each queue. The management can get difficult at
TCP/IP model.
times with different packet sizes. A new scheduling algorithm,
In [67], a cross-layer design algorithm for QoS packet
called the dynamic WRR is proposed in [81]. This algorithm
scheduling has been defined which considers delay and infor-
is suitable for all traffic forms having variable and constant
mation shared at the PHY, MAC and network layers. It helps
bit rates. The queues of traffic are assigned a dynamic weight.
in high-speed data transmission through careful monitoring of
It helps the network in providing multimedia services even
the constant changes in the network while providing fairness
in the presence of bursty traffic. In [82], a modified dynamic
to all flows. No that, for best-effort services, the scheduling
WRR scheme is proposed. This scheme guarantees the delays
scheme treats all flows with the same priority. Several QoS
in real-time traffic and provides efficient transmission of other
scheduling techniques have been proposed [68] [69] and many
forms of traffic.
enhancements of current techniques have been discussed [70]
 9

TABLE V
C OMPARISON OF THE MAC LAYER SERVICE DIFFERENTIATION SCHEMES USING DCF IN THE IEEE 802.11 STANDARD .

MAC scheme Main features Advantages References

Distributed Fair Scheduling The DFS algorithm uses the backoff mechanism as a Provides fairness to all the flows; performance of high [56]
(DFS) function of packet length and the priority of the flow. priority flows is increased.

Varying DIFS Flow priority is given by setting different DIFS durations. Provides benefits to real-time applications where higher [25]
To avoid collisions, a similar backoff time is maintained. delay is more significant than lower packet loss.

Differentiated maximum frame Services are differentiated by defining maximum frame Reduces contention overhead and achieves good differ- [58]
length size proportionately to a flow’s priority. entiation.

Blackburst The blackburst scheme jams the channel according to the Minimizes delay of real-time flows; high priority flows [59] [8]
amount of time it has waited. get maximum benefit in the absence of low priority
flows.

Enhanced Distributed Coordi- EDCF is a contention-based channel access function of Provides better service differentiation using priority [64] [65]
nated Function (EDCF) IEEE 802.11e which can provide differentiated service. queues.

Hybrid Coordination Function The hybrid controller provides transmission opportunities Priorities are given based upon the channel conditions. [63]
(HCF) to stations with higher priority packets.

d) Earliest Due Date: In the normal EDD scheme for The IEEE 802.11e standard introduces a contention-based
wired networks, packets of several different flows are assigned MAC layer scheme called extended DCF (EDCF) and a
deadlines according to which packets are served first by the polling-based scheme called HCF controlled channel access
packet scheduler with the smaller deadline indicating higher (HCCA). Both these schemes are useful for QoS provisioning
priority. Since wireless networks show varying characteristics, to support delay-sensitive voice and video applications [87],
the deployment of EDD is not an easy task. Therefore, in and they are described next.
[83], a channel-dependent EDD (CD-EDD) is described. It
1) Extended DCF (EDCF): In the DCF configuration, a
depends on the channel state, and the packets are queued by
contention window is set after a frame is transmitted. This
the scheduler on the basis of earliest expiry time and other
is done to avoid any collisions. The window defines the
channel parameters. The prioritized flow consequently gets the
contention time of various stations who contend with each
highest transmission rate among all the flows.
other for access to channel. However, each of the stations
4) Traffic Shaping: Traffic shaping is used to control the cannot seize the channel immediately, rather the MAC protocol
flows of traffic in a channel. The basic idea is to limit the uses a randomly chosen time period for each station after that
amount of packets per station. A traffic controller is used to channel has undergone transmission [88].
comply the QoS requirements of each flow. Traffic shaping EDCF uses this contention window to differentiate between
can split the resources according to different requirements of high priority and low priority services [64]. The central coor-
different flows. The traffic shaper must adapt to the variations dinator assigns a contention window of shorter length to the
in a channel. The traffic shaping mechanism has a strong stations with higher priority that helps them to transmit before
impact on the performance of a system [84]. Several traffic the lower priority ones [89] [65]. To differentiate further, inter-
shaping parameters are used in the QoS model of IEEE frame spacing (IFS) can be varied according to different traffic
802.11 standard: e.g., the aggregation level and the bursting categories. Instead of using a DIFS as for the DCF traffic, a
level. Aggregation level refers to the amount of packets that new inter-frame spacing called arbitration inter-frame spacing
are aggregated into a single IEEE 802.11 packet. Bursting (AIFS) is used. The AIFS used for traffic has a duration of
level refers to the amount of packets transmitted at each a few time slots longer than the DIFS duration. Therefore, a
transmission opportunity [85]. traffic category having smaller AIFS gets higher priority [90].
2) HCF Controlled Channel Access: The HCF controlled
D. QoS Support in IEEE 802.11e channel access (HCCA) is IEEE 802.11e specific, and it makes
use of a Hybrid Coordinator (HC) to manage the bandwidth
The IEEE 802.11e standard is an important extension of the
allocation of wireless medium [91]. The HC can obtain a
IEEE 802.11 standard focusing on QoS [86] that works with
transmission opportunity (TXOP) and initiate data deliveries
any PHY implementation. Wireless nodes equipped with IEEE
to provide transmission opportunities to a station with a higher
802.11e features are now known as QoS stations (QSTAs)
priority without any backoff; that is to say, the HC can access
and they are associated with a QoS access point (QAP) to
the channels after a PIFS amount of time rather than a DIFS
form a QoS basic service set (QBSS). The main feature of the
amount of time as for the other stations [86]. As PIFS is
IEEE 802.11e standard is that it improves the MAC layer for
smaller than DIFS and AIFS, the HC has a priority over the
QoS provisioning by providing support for: (i) segregation of
DCF traffic, and also over the ECF traffic that uses AIFS.
data packets based on priority requirements; (ii) negotiation
of QoS parameters through a central coordinator or AP; and 3) Control Access Period (CAP): The CAP in HCCA is
(iii) admission control. a period when access to the wireless medium is controlled
 10

[41]. During this time, the HC, or the AP, gives the right of the load increases beyond a certain limit, the QoS guarantees
using the medium to a device. The AP can gain access to are not ensured even to high priority traffic [101] [102].
the medium before any other stations, and can then provide This is where the admission control mechanism helps in
the transmission opportunity to any station. This guarantees preventing the network from becoming congested, by allowing
data transfer from a station irrespective of the congestion level or disallowing flows depending on whether the conditions are
in the channel [92]. The AP can schedule such transmission favorable to meet QoS requirements. More specifically, the
opportunities for each of the stations, and can provide the purpose of admission control is to limit the amount of newly
parameters needed for QoS provisioning [39]. admitted traffic such that the QoS performance of existing
flows is not degraded [32]. Admission control is a key compo-
a) CAP in the Contention Period: A CAP in the con-
nent to adapt to the traffic variations according to the changing
tention period is used to regulate access to the medium to
environment of IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks [103].
guarantee various QoS parameters [93]. However, in this
In [104], Hanzo et al. has presented a very comprehensive
method, the AP is not the controller (or the sole decision
survey on different admission control schemes available in
maker) [94]. This is because any stations having the DCF
the literature. Admission control can be categorized into three
traffic, or any EDCA traffic, can interfere with the scheduling
different methodologies [105].
performed at the AP, so this can delay the already scheduled
data transfer at a particular station. Moreover, CAPs may use
an RTS to prevent other devices while contending for the 1) Measurement-based Admission Control: In this scheme,
medium [41]. This causes a marginal overhead [95]. the decisions are made through continuous monitoring of net-
work status, such as throughput and delay. A certain threshold
b) CAP in the Contention Free Period: The contention is maintained according to the network status for admission
free period (CFP) is the most efficient way to use the channel, of new traffic flows. Nor et al. in [106] proposed a metric
and it allows the AP to have a fine control of the medium [96]. called network utilization characteristic (NUC) as a means
During this period, the AP has full command of the medium, for admission of traffic flows into network. NUC defines
so the stations do not contend for the access to the medium the amount of channel utilized to transmit the flow over the
[97]. The scheduling of the traffic, and the provision of QoS network. This scheme guarantees QoS to high priority flows
guarantee to the stations, is handled by the AP itself. The under loaded channel environments. Another scheme presented
AP can set multiple CAPs following each other and uses the by Wu et al. in [107] is that each traffic class is assigned a
smallest possible time intervals to separate every CAP [95]. certain portion of available resources, and these resources are
4) Other IEEE 802.11e QoS features: We now outline some then remaining reserved for that particular class. In this regard,
other important features of the IEEE 802.11e standard. The only the traffic with higher priority compared to the existing
TXOP parameter defines a time limit for the utilization of traffic is admitted.
radio resources at the stations [86]. The automatic power save
delivery (APSD) mechanism is used by the AP to deliver
2) Model-based Admission Control: In model-based
multiple frames within a service period. Thereby, APs can
schemes, the network status is measured based on some mod-
enter sleep period until the next service period to conserve
els. The Markov chain models are quite popular in attempts
energy [98]. The APSD mechanism has scheduled APSD and
at modeling IEEE 802.11 although other approaches are also
unscheduled APSD, both of which lead to power saving as
being explored due to some limitations of Markovian models
compared to the legacy IEEE 802.11. The IEEE 802.11e
[108]. In [109], an analytical model is used to estimate the
standard also supports block ACKs for the acknowledgment of
minimum bandwidth requirement of all flows. When a newly
multiple MAC protocol data units (MPDUs) in a single block
admitted flow need to be activated, the algorithm checks if
acknowledgment frame resulting in reduced overhead [99].
it is going to result in preservation of QoS requirements of
The NoAck is another enhancement that indicates the loss
existing flows.
of a packet, so retransmission can be ensured quickly to reduce
delay [100]. Direct link setup is another supported feature that
allows direct station-to-station transfer within a service set. 3) Measurement-aided, Model-based Admission Control: It
is a hybrid of measurement-based and model-based schemes.
IV. N ETWORK L AYER Q O S S OLUTIONS FOR IEEE 802.11 The algorithm in [110] takes network measurements in a
loaded environment and also the data rate requirements of
The bulk of research investigating QoS solutions for the
the flow that is requesting for admission. Furthermore, a
network layer of IEEE 802.11 networks has focused on
channel model is applied to predict the network conditions
admission control and QoS routing. These two important facets
and provides QoS enhancements accordingly. Another solution
of network layer QoS solutions are discussed next in separate
is the threshold-based approach proposed in [111] in which
subsections.
the channel conditions are continuously monitored and the
contention probability is measured. When any new flows
A. Admission Control request for admission, the admission control checks for the
Although the enhancements explained at the MAC layer competing flows. The absolute bandwidth and the expected
provides service differentiation among different traffic flows, delay of the new flow are measured. If this satisfies the
it can ensure QoS only when network load is reasonable. If threshold conditions, then this flow is admitted.
 11

B. QoS Routing Schemes V. T RANSPORT LAYER Q O S S OLUTIONS FOR IEEE 802.11

The classical version of TCP protocol performs rate control
QoS routing is an essential part of the overall QoS archi- based on its assumption that packet losses occur solely due
tecture in the IEEE 802.11 standard. QoS routing allows the to network congestion. This assumption does not hold true
network to compute a path that supports the QoS objectives for wireless networks where channel noise and interference
of various flows under the constraints of wireless medium. can be another significant cause of packet loss. With such
The chosen path may or may not be the shortest path, but an assumption, TCP performs poorly in terms of end-to-end
it meets a particular service category objectives [112] [113]. QoS since it may reduce the sending rate even in uncongested
As an example, Matos et al. proposed to compute routing networks under the mistaken assumption that packet losses are
decisions of voice, video, and data in a decentralized fashion only caused by network congestion.
at intermediate nodes in wireless multi-service networks such The problem of suboptimal performance of TCP in wireless
that the overall network performance is optimized per the networks has been known for long and much effort has focused
desired QoS [114]. on improving TCP’s performance [130] [131]. Most of the
There are various metrics that can be used for measuring existing work in the IEEE 802.11 standard is focused on the
QoS routing performance. We describe an example work for QoS requirements of multimedia applications, such as VoIP
each metric. The metrics proposed for QoS-based routing [132], and data traffic, such as web, email, media downloads,
in the literature are: (i) minimum throughput, or capacity, etc. But with growing demand of wireless networks, time-
required in bits per second [115]; ii) maximum tolerable delay critical applications with voice and video do place significant
in seconds [116]; iii) maximum tolerable packet loss ratio QoS requirements on wireless medium. To upgrade QoS at
(PLR) [117], and iv) maximum tolerable jitter [118] [119]. In the transport layer, we can adopt several techniques taking
addition to these generic metrics, there are also other metrics into account the delay and loss as the basic parameters. With
specific to various layers of TCP/IP model. For example, at the main focus on congestion control and error control, several
the network layer, achievable throughput or residual capacity techniques are discussed below.
[115], end-to-end delay [120] [116], node buffer space [121],
and route lifetime [122] are important metrics; at the link (or
A. Congestion Control
MAC) layer, link reliability [123], and link stability [122] are
important performance metrics; finally, signal-to-interference The bursty nature of the wireless media and path loss
ratio (SIR) [124], bit error rate (BER) [125], and node’s causes the degradation of services to applications that require
residual energy [126] are important performance metrics at the high video quality. This degradation is caused by network
PHY layer. A comprehensive summary of QoS-based routing congestion. This is why TCP congestion control is essential
metrics is provided in a survey paper [27]. to minimize packet loss and reduce delay. Rate control is a
congestion mechanism which reduces network congestion by
There are a number of frameworks that can be used for
comparing the required bandwidth for video with the available
QoS-based routing. We describe two such frameworks.
bandwidth [133]. Multiple standards of rate-adaptive video
1) Measurement-based QoS Routing: In [127], a frame- encodings [134] exist for different applications, such as H.261
work is provided to achieve fairness among different priority and H.263 for video conferencing [135] [136], as well as
flows. The basic concept is to allow the high priority traf- MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 for real-time transmission [137] [138].
fic to help the low priority traffic by sharing their unused The main purpose of a rate-adaptive encoding scheme is
bandwidth. This scheme can considerably improve the system to enhance the video quality under a certain encoding rate.
performance and it can shorten the delays when the traffic Rate control and rate shaping [137] are the algorithms for
load is very high. The QoS-supporting algorithm presented in congestion control in the IEEE 802.11 standard.
[128] helps applications to find routes that satisfy their service 1) Rate Control: It is very important for an end-to-end
needs, or a feedback is provided in case of non-availability of protocol to accurately estimate the appropriate sending rate for
these resources. Thus, a protocol that is QoS-aware and also network transfer since an infeasibly high sending rate can re-
has admission control and feedback mechanism is proposed. sult in packet losses and retransmissions. TCP retransmissions
Another resource reservation algorithm is proposed by Xue that result from packet losses may lead to unacceptably long
in [129] in which bandwidth and delay are measured very delay for QoS-aware multimedia delivery over the wireless
accurately using a MAC protocol with collision detection. channels. Rate control subsumes flow control and congestion
These calculations are then used by the algorithm to make control which adjust sending rates to ensure that the sender’s
decision in admission and reservation of resources. rate does not overwhelm the receiver and the network, respec-
tively.
2) Ticket-based Probing Algorithm: This algorithm uses Two types of congestion control are in wide practice:
tickets to limit the number of paths observed. When any window-based [139] and rate-based [140]. The window-based
source wants to get a QoS satisfying path to any destination, approach analyzes the available network bandwidth by grad-
it sends probe messages along with a ticket. The number of ually increasing the size of congestion window. When con-
tickets is equivalent to the number of paths searched. When the gestion is detected (through the detection of packet loss), the
destination receives this probe message, the path from source protocol decreases the window size by a large amount. The
to destination is set [116]. abrupt decrease in the window size in response to congestion
 12

is necessary to prevent network failure. Window-based con- VI. A PPLICATION L AYER Q O S S OLUTIONS FOR IEEE
trol performs retransmissions which result in extensive delay, 802.11
which is intolerable in case of real-time video transmission. Apart from work at the lower layers, it is also possible to
The rate-based control approach sends at a rate based on an implement QoS in IEEE 802.11 networks at the application
estimated available network bandwidth. If the estimated band- layer. Traditionally, the work done on application layer QoS
width is accurate, then network congestion can be avoided. The has focused on various aspects of multimedia delivery using
rate-based control approach is usually used for transportation techniques such as scalable video coding [148], error cor-
of real-time video. Existing rate control mechanism for real- rection coding and rate-distortion optimization [149], source
time video are source-based, receiver-based or hybrid. The coding [150], transcoding [151], adaptive transmission [151],
interested reader is referred to the paper [141], and the refer- as well as rate control [150]. We note here that most of
ences therein, for a description of rate-control work focusing the QoS work done at the application layer is cross-layered
on supporting real-time traffic in WLANs. in nature, specifically drawing upon information from, and
2) Rate Shaping: Rate shaping is the practice in which the interacting with, other layers. We provide two brief examples
compressed video bit stream adjusts itself to the rate of a as illustration.
target rate. We can think of a rate shaper as an interaction Chakareski et al. [149] proposed an optimization-based
medium between an encoder and the network, which matches error-correction coding scheme, which works at the applica-
the encoder’s output to the available network bandwidth. Since tion layer, for rate-distortion optimized multimedia streaming
rate shaper does not need any interaction with the encoder, it to wireless clients. The scheme allows the sender to compute
can be used for any video coding scheme for both live and the prioritization levels of packets to satisfy an average trans-
stored videos. mission rate constraint while minimizing the average end-to-
end distortion
B. Error Control
Van der Schaar et al. [148] proposed a framework for delay-
The QoS guarantees can also be made through error control. constrained video streaming over IEEE 802.11 a/e WLANs.
The main role of congestion control is to avoid packet loss. The authors considered the problem of video transmission over
However, we are unable to avoid packet loss completely in the HCCA and developed a cross-layered optimization framework
Internet, and as a result the quality of video or other bandwidth working at the PHY, MAC, and application layer of the TCP/IP
hungry applications are affected. The error control schemes at layered model. In another cross-layered video streaming paper
the transport layer are application-aware. The error recovery [152], Li and Van Der Schaar proposed an error protection
schemes can be divided into two basic types: scheme for transmission of layered coded video to provide
1) Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ): The ARQ scheme adaptive QoS through prioritized queuing at the network layer
uses an acknowledgement packet to indicate that a packet has and limitation of retries (or retransmissions) at the link layer.
been received successfully. It is very efficient for high-speed The basic insight of this work is that different video layers of
wireless links because the round trip delay of the link is very varying importance may not receive uniform processing and
small [142]. The ARQ scheme can be implemented at both protection, but may receive unequal priority depending on the
transport and link layers of the OSI model [143]. The traffic is channel conditions.
segmented into queues such that QoS guarantees are ensured. The techniques for enhancements of various layers (e.g.,
The ARQ scheme can adapt to channel errors and is more MAC, network, transport and application layers) are summa-
efficient in terms of bandwidth utilization. rized in Table VI.
2) Forward Error Correction (FEC): The FEC scheme
adds redundant bits to the flow which helps in recovering VII. C ROSS - LAYER Q O S S OLUTIONS FOR IEEE 802.11
the erroneous bits. The FEC is used for the transmission of
real-time applications which have a strict delay requirements While most QoS enhancement techniques are implemented
[144] [145]. However, a drawback of FEC is the increased at the MAC layer, wireless QoS can benefit from cross-layered
overhead even in the absence of errors in the link [146]. FEC interaction and implementation [158]. Since QoS provisioning
helps in maintaining a uniform throughput and time delay in entails various issues that span the range of the TCP/IP layered
the networks. However, the overhead increases with channel stack, cross-layer solutions are finding increasing deployment.
errors because long FEC codes must be used. This section discusses a few cross-layered solutions for
implementing QoS in wireless networks in general, and in
C. Prioritization IEEE 802.11 networks in particular. The various techniques
for cross-layer enhancements discussed in this section are
The TCP ACK prioritization method uses both the AIFS
summarized in Table VII.
and the minimum contention window (CWmin) parameters.
The stations having smaller CWmin gets more transmission
opportunities than stations having larger value of CWmin as A. Cross-layer Features for Wireless Multimedia
their backoff counter is smaller. The AIFS parameters can be With increasing multimedia traffic on the Internet and wire-
used to allow the AP to have quicker access to the wireless less access being anticipated to become the future predominant
medium. Since the TCP ACKs can go freely through the Internet technology [169], delivering multimedia applications
bottleneck links, the performance of the system is upgraded with enhanced QoS has become extremely important. Wireless
[147]. channel information cannot be predicted easily due to deep
 13

TABLE VI
L AYERED OVERVIEW OF Q O S T ECHNIQUES IN THE IEEE 802.11- BASED W IRELESS N ETWORKS .

QoS Enhancement Technique(s) Description Reference(s)

MAC Layer
Priority Queueing Data packets are segregated based on their priorities in queues. The packets with the highest priority are [54] [55]
transmitted first and so on.
Distributed Fair Scheduling Each flow is assigned bandwidth according to its priority. [56]
Varying DIFS DIFS is varied in order to differentiate among flows. Each flow’s priority is set by giving it a different DIFS.
Maximum Frame Length High priority stations can transmit larger frames comparatively. [57]
Extended DCF Shorter contention windows are assigned to higher priority stations helping them to transmit first. [89] [90]
Blackburst Contention period is used to indicate the waiting time for medium access. [8]

Network Layer
Admission Control The network is thoroughly examined and when congestion occurs, the nodes decrease their best-effort traffic [153] [101]
in response.
QoS Routing Some routing mechanisms are used under which QoS paths are determined. QoS path may or may not be [154] [112] [113] [114]
similar to the shortest path.

Transport Layer
Congestion Control The congestion control mechanism orders the source to transmit traffic at a rate that is not greater than the [133] [139] [140]
available network bandwidth.
Error Correction Forward Error Correction and Automatic Repeat Request are used to ensure reliability. [142] [145] [143]
TCP ACK Prioritization The Contention Window and AIFS are used for flow prioritization. [147]

Application Layer:
Scalable Video Coding A cross-layered framework is proposed for delay-constrained video streaming over IEEE 802.11 a/e WLANs. [148]
The framework works at the PHY, MAC, and application layers of the TCP/IP layered model.
Transcoding Video transcoding reencodes the stream to adapt the bit rate to the available resource. [155]
Application layer Error Control An application layer optimization-based error correction coding scheme for rate-distortion optimized multi- [156]
media streaming to wireless clients.
Real-time Retry Limit Adapta- A real-time retry-limit adaptation is proposed at the link layer for video with adaptive QoS. [152]
tion
Hybrid ARQ/ FEC Multicast and unicast real-time video streaming approaches over WLANs are implemented through a hybrid [157]
ARQ algorithm that combines FEC and ARQ.

TABLE VII
OVERVIEW OF C ROSS - LAYER E NHANCEMENT T ECHNIQUES IN THE IEEE 802.11- BASED W IRELESS N ETWORKS .

Feature(s) Description References

Wireless Multimedia SISO is used with adaptive modulation schemes at the PHY layer; and the impact on delay bound is [159]
measured at the data link layer.

Adaptive Modulating Scheme The node with the highest priority is assigned resources first, and each type of connection adopts AMC [160]
at the PHY layer.

Wireless Scheduling The information received from the PHY layer is utilized, and an efficient cross-layer packet scheduling [161]
approach is proposed which guarantees QoS parameters like delay, BER and received signal strength.

Cooperative Communications QoS is ensured by using cross-layer design taking into account the PHY and network layers using [162]
cooperative communication.

Channel Coding and Retransmissions The use of hybrid schemes corrects the errors in an adaptive manner by using a combined scheme of [163] [164]
channel coding and retransmissions, thus improving the TCP performance.

SoftMAC SoftMAC regulates real-time and best-effort services in the network. [165]

OSAR and OMAR Both are used in opportunistic networks for scheduling and routing. [166] [167]

Dynamic Priority Functions Defined for new nodes which are updated dynamically. AMC and MIMO are used accordingly for QoS [160]
provisioning.
Cross-layer Perceptual ARQ A cross-layer priority-based ARQ algorithm for H.264 video streaming in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. [168]
 14

fades and multipath effects, but getting information of source on real-time multimedia QoS provisioning performance at the
motion using video sequence is not hard. Due to the error- link layer.
prone nature of wireless medium, and the undifferentiated
nature of Internet’s best-effort service model, multimedia
delivery over the wireless networks is technically challenging. C. Wireless Scheduling
To improve user experience over the wireless Internet, QoS The interaction between packet scheduling and the PHY
support can be introduced at different layers. layer is studied in [161] where the network is used efficiently
In [170], the authors propose a cross-layered architecture— by predicting the future state of the wireless channel, as well as
combining application-level, transport-layer, as well as link- controlling the transmission power in multipath fading wireless
layer controls—for supporting multimedia delivery over wire- CDMA networks. It is based on cross-layered model in which
less Internet. These controls incorporate issues such as dy- the information received from PHY layer is utilized by the
namic estimation of network and channel; adaptive error con- scheduler, and an efficient cross-layer packet scheduling is
trol, congestion control, and ARQ mechanisms; and priority proposed which guarantees users guaranteed QoS performance
based scheduling. In another work [171], a cross-layer frame- in terms of delay, BER, and received signal strength.
work is proposed in which the source motion is captured from
a video sequence, and it consists of a packetization scheme, D. Cooperative Communications
a cross-layer FEC-based unequal error protection scheme,
QoS can also be ensured by using cross-layered design
and an intra coding rate selection scheme. This significantly
taking into account the PHY and networking layers using co-
improves transmission of bursty traffic and its losses over the
operative communication [162]. Cooperative communication
wireless network without making the system complex.
is first studied at PHY layer, followed by routing to ensure
In order to ensure QoS in real-time applications, we can
QoS in the network: i.e., we use an optimized link cost for the
bound delay instead of high spectral efficiency [159]. For
decision making of our routing leading to better path selection.
example, we can ensure QoS for multimedia applications by
The power consumption is kept to a minimum possible value,
analyzing the impact of the PHY layer on the data link layer.
and end-to-end reliability is achieved by reducing the error
The single input and single output (SISO) mechanism is used
rate. The selection of the best possible path leads to end-
with adaptive modulating schemes at the physical layer; and
to-end reliability and thus the ensuring of QoS. In [174],
at the data link layer, we check the impact of the physical
the authors describe a novel concept named cooperative QoS
layer on the delay bound. Physical layer is modeled using a
routing, which sets up a routing path that helps to satisfy user’s
finite-state Markov chain. The use of appropriate scheduling
bandwidth requirement. The authors propose an optimization
schemes, and the resources allocated to the users can thus
problem, called ‘widest cooperative routing path’(WCRP)
ensure high QoS for each user. This technique allocates
problem, which finds a cooperative routing path with the
resources to real-time users in time slots in a dynamic method
maximum uninterrupted bandwidth and a scheduling scheme
using SISO along with adaptive modulating codes.
to evade interference.

B. Adaptive Modulating Scheme (AMC) E. Combining Channel Coding and Retransmissions

There are various works in literature that have proposed The transport layer ensures a reliable transmission by re-
combining QoS reservation and scheduling at the MAC layer sending corrupted packets due to congestion. However, packets
with adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) at the PHY may get corrupted in wireless networks due to other reasons
layer. For instance, Liu et al. [172] have proposed an hybrid such as fading and multipath effects. The requests for repeated
architecture combining QoS reservation and scheduling at the transmission for the packet in such cases would negatively
MAC layer with AMC at the PHY layer. With AMC, the impact the performance of the network. To cater to this
physical transmission parameters can adapt to the changes in problem, joint cross-layer techniques are used. FEC and ARQ
the link quality. As an example, the PHY layer can fallback are used as error correction codes; where FEC is used in delay-
to a modulation scheme more robust to noise, such as BPSK sensitive applications [175], while ARQ is used for delay-
instead of QAM-16, in the case link quality degrades. tolerant applications (e.g., audio/video streaming). In most of
In [173], the authors derive an optimal policy to reduce the applications, FEC does not negotiate with the receiver for
the average amount of dropped packets of a delay-controlled error correction because of the delay-sensitive nature although
wireless node. The presented framework utilizes adaptive feedback from the receiver can be effective [163] [164]. Using
modulation for transmission of the optimal amount of packets hybrid schemes corrects the errors in an adaptive manner
to satisfy the QoS requirements. This framework, devised as by using combined channel coding and retransmissions thus
a Markov decision process (MDP), works on reducing the improving the TCP performance. Recently, network coding
long-term packet drop rate. In another work [160], a cross- has been extensively used in wireless networks to upgrade the
layered approach is presented for mobile wireless networks limited wireless capacity. In WLANs, network coding can be
which studies the impact of the PHY layer infrastructure over applied to packet retransmission. More than one packet can be
the link layer QoS performance. This work considers MIMO evenly transmitted by a single retransmission at base station.
diversity schemes along with AMC in its PHY layer analysis, In [176], the retransmission is based on network coding, and
while also studying the impact of the PHY layer infrastructure it cooperates with IEEE 802.11e EDCA. Consequently, QoS
 15

of high priority group is upgraded from the aspect of efficient alone cannot satisfy bandwidth requirements and rerouting is
loss recovery. also needed to send some packets through alternative routes
and thereby release congestion. The routes are then selected
according to the joint metric of energy consumed and traffic
F. Joint Cross-layer Techniques
accumulated, with priority given to nodes with longer queue
This subsection presents four main joint cross-layer tech- length. A similar approach is presented in [178] which aims
niques. to minimize the total average transmission power in a wireless
multi-hop network through optimal link scheduling and power
1) Joint Rate Control, Admission Control, and Scheduling:
control. This work, however, requires tight time synchroniza-
The main goal of an Internet designer is to share the resources
tion between transmitters, and quasi-static channel conditions
efficiently. To use the scarce bandwidth in an efficient way, it
that remain constant over several time slots, thus limiting the
is usually the case that real-time traffic co-exists with the rest
applicability of this work to interconnecting stationary nodes.
of the traffic. We can jointly solve rate-control, admission-
control, and scheduling problems for optimized solutions. In 3) Joint Scheduling and Rate Optimization for Opportunis-
infrastructure-based networks, the eDCF is providing QoS to tic Transmission: In order to utilize the scarce resources of the
the nodes; but in distributed multihop networks, it is not wireless networks, opportunistic transmission takes advantage
possible due hidden terminal and interference problems. Thus, of the varying nature of the channel and improves throughput
admission control puts a limit on real-time traffic that can of the network. Two approaches are used in this regard:
overwhelm the system. By collaboration with nearby nodes, the first one uses the time diversity of an individual link
the interfering best-effort traffic is cut down to reduce the by changing the transmission rate according to the channel
contention of real-time traffic. A scheme called SoftMAC conditions [179] [180], while the second one considers multi-
is proposed in [165] to use a control mechanism in order user diversity and jointly considers the time and spatial het-
to regulate real-time and best-effort traffic in a distributed erogeneity of a channel. Wang et al. [181] have proposed a
manner by coordinating with neighboring nodes. SoftMAC MAC solution named ‘opportunistic scheduling and auto rate’
uses admission control to make sure that real-time traffic has (OSAR) which jointly considers rate adaptation and multi-
sufficient bandwidth along its path. It also caters for rate user diversity. OSAR protocols exploits the channel variations
control to avoid collisions between the real-time traffic and the by automatically adjusting the sending rate to best match
best-effort traffic. Moreover, it has a priority queueing module the channel conditions. In a followup work, Wang et al.
to prioritize the real-time traffic. have proposed another solution ‘opportunistic medium access
QoS for wireless networks can be ensured by joint solutions and adaptive rates’ (OMAR) [167], which aims at efficient
working at the PHY and network layers. Such solutions can utilization of the shared medium in IEEE 802.11-based ad-hoc
include joint routing and rate allocation to ensure QoS for networks through joint consideration of multi-user diversity,
different applications. Zhang et al. have proposed a framework distributed scheduling, and adaptivity. OMAR uses a clustering
for cross-layer design for QoS support in multihop wireless framework in which a node with a predefined number of links
networks, and have reviewed in detail the interplay between can function as the clusterhead to locally coordinate multiuser
joint routing at the network layer and rate allocation at the communication. The clusterhead is responsible for initiating
transport layer. In another paper [177], Zhu et al. discuss medium access, while the cluster embers make medium access
an optimization of joint allocation rate and multipath routing decisions in a distributed manner.
which allocates rates depending upon the distortion rate and
congestion level. This paper considered the problem of rate 4) Joint Channel Assignment and Routing: In this section,
allocation for multi-user video streaming sharing multiple het- we present techniques considering the data link layer and
erogeneous access networks. The problem was formulated as network layer jointly. Interference among the channels is one
a convex optimization problem and distributed approximation of the main hurdle in achieving QoS in wireless networks.
of the optimization was proposed. Orthogonal channel assignment is a potential solution to
this problem. In [182], the authors present a joint algorithm
2) Joint Power Control, Scheduling, and Routing: Various for channel assignment and routing. The channel assignment
works in literature have demonstrated the deficiencies of the algorithm performs two functionalities, the first one assigns
traditional siloed approach of independently performed power channels on the basis of network topology, and the second
control, scheduling, and routing in wireless networking [166] function is to deal with the traffic information and assigns
[158]. It is worth highlighting the strongly coupled nature of channels accordingly. Similarly it caters for creating multiple
the these problems by noting that a change in power allocation, routes in the network to achieve higher throughput.
or the schedules on a given link, can impact flows that do
not utilize the modified link. Due to the strong coupling
between the network, MAC, and PHY layers, the power VIII. M ODERN N ETWORK A RCHITECTURAL T RENDS AND
control, scheduling, and routing problems are best addressed W IRELESS Q O S
jointly.
With joint scheduling and power control, a network can gen- This section presents three types of modern network ar-
erally achieve higher throughput and lower delay in a network chitectures. Various research areas of recent architectures
[166], although for some unbalanced topologies, scheduling discussed in this section are summarized in Table VIII.
 16

TABLE VIII
S AMPLE OF R ESEARCH ON Q O S IN IEEE 802.11- BASED W IRELESS N ETWORKS W ITH R ECENT A RCHITECTURAL D EVELOPMENTS

Project Description of QoS Enhancement Technique(s) Reference(s)

Software Defined Wireless Networks

meSDN Achieves real-time detection of QoS demands in a network and provides end-to-end QoS control. [183]
QoSFlow Provides packet scheduling algorithm to improve QoS mechanism in OpenFlow/ SDN-based networks. [184]
OpenQoS Provides a dynamic routing scheme that generates shortest path for data delivery in order to minimize packet [185]
loss and latency.
OpenFlow Controller for Multimedia Delivery Facilitates multimedia delivery with QoS using the best path with optimal service configuration. [186]
FlowVisor Supports ‘QoS-enabled network slicing’ that provides a user or an application with a certain network capacity [187]
“slice”, which is isolated from other coexisting slices servicing other users/networks.
Multimedia Streaming QoS Architectures for SDN Provides QoS extensions for multimedia delivery using distributed control architecture in multi-operator SDNs. [188]
Interference Mitigation in Enterprise WLAN Proposees an OpenFlow-based framework for interference mitigation in enterprise WLANs using [189]
SDN/OpenFlow.
OpenFlow-based QoS support for Ofelia Proposes architectural extensions to make Ofelia a QoS-supporting federated experimental testbed. [190]
OpenQFlow Proposes a flexible variant of OpenFlow supporting a two-tiered flow-based QoS framework. [191]

Cloud-based Wireless Networks

EDCA model for Cloud Proposes an EDCA model for QoS-aware differentiated multimedia cloud service provisioning in WLAN [192]
networks.
Resource Allocation in Clouds Proposes energy-aware resource allocation mechanisms for data centers set up in cloud environments. [193]
Dalvi et al. Proposes centralized cloud-based approaches for managing WLANs. [194]
CloneCloud Utilizes computation offloading through elastic execution between mobile devices and cloud. [195]
LWAPP (RFC 5412) Proposes lightweight access point protocol (LWAPP) for centralized cloud-based WLAN management. [196]
CloudMAC Enables APs to redirect MAC frames only. Processing of MAC data is done via cloud computing infrastructure. [197]
IEEE 802.11 on Cloud-based Radio over Fibre Conducts a study on the feasibility of the architecture of IEEE 802.11 on cloud-based radio over fibre. [198]

Cognitive Wireless Networks

Coexistence of 802.15.4 with IEEE 802.11 Proposes distributed adaptation strategies to ensure coexistence of IEEE 802.11 WLAN and IEEE 802.15.4 [199]
wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the ISM band.
Coexistence between IEEE 802.11b and IEEE Proposes algorithms—based on dynamic frequency selection (DFS), power control (PC) and time-agility [200]
802.16a networks (TA)—to allow IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.16a networks to coexist in the same unlicensed band.
QoS-aware MAC for IEEE 802.11p Proposes an efficient multichannel QoS cognitive MAC (MQOG) for cognitive vehicular networks. [201]
Integration of IEEE 802.11 and 3G Proposes schemes for integrating IEEE 802.11 and 3G seamlessly while satisfying QoS guarantees and roaming [202]
agreements.
Managing TCP in DSA-based WLANs Proposes a framework known as DSASync for improved end-to-end TCP performance in dynamic spectrum [203]
access (DSA) wireless networks.
Handover between IEEE 802.11b and overlay net- Proposes algorithms for intersystem handover between IEEE 802.11b and an overlay network while satisfying [204]
works the QoS parameters of minimum data rate, maximum data block delay, and maximum BER.

A. Software-defined Wireless Networks (SWNs) used to communicate with SDN applications. SDN provides
the flexibility of programming a network through the control
With increasing deployment and diversification of wireless
plane. This can help in simplifying network management and
technology, managing wireless networks has become very
operations. The rest of this subsection presents QoS efforts for
challenging. Software-defined networking (SDN) is a promis-
IEEE 802.11-based SWNs.
ing architecture that can be used for conveniently operating,
controlling, and managing wireless networks. The defining
characteristic of SDN is generally understood to serve as the
separation of the control and data planes. The presence of
programmable controllers to adjust the operating parameters
enables us to call these networks ‘software defined’.
Traditionally, networking devices, such as firewalls, routers,
etc., require vendor-specific software for programming their
operating parameters. This programming can be done manu-
ally by a network administrator through the command line
interface (CLI). This limits the margin of innovation that
can be incorporated into the modern networks such as the
world wide web or the WLANs. SDN changes this notion of
network programming by extracting the control intelligence
from the data plane and managing all the data plane devices
at centralized controller(s) [205]. Figure 3 shows a traditional
network where the control and data planes are co-located
in each networking device, and so the network control is
decentralized. In comparison, SDN has a centralized archi-
tecture where the central SDN controller is controlling the
multiple data planes; specifically, southbound APIs are used Fig. 3. Comparison of a traditional network and a SDN network architecture
to communicate with data plane, and northbound APIs are [206].
 17

QoS efforts for IEEE 802.11-based SWNs: Traditionally, decisions at the SDN controller. The controller acts as the
SDN has been focused on campus and data center networks; brain of a network where the forwarding decisions are made.
but increasingly, researchers are also focusing on wireless The routing choices are associated with the priority of the
access networks. Since it can be difficult to manually configure data flows. The resources are reserved at the controller, based
various QoS knobs, OpenFlow and SDN architectures can on the type of delivery the controller can provide [211]. This
be very useful in automating scalable control of network reservation scheme does not affect the other types of flows
QoS based on high-level descriptions of application/service due to the dynamic routing mechanism in the OpenFlow
requirements. Kim et al. [207] proposed an OpenFlow-based architecture.
network QoS control framework which includes per-flow rate Zhao et al. define a framework for a single SDN controller
limiters and dynamic priority assignment. controlling all the APs via OpenFlow interface in [189]. The
SDN-enabled IEEE 802.11 networks provide the benefits proposed framework adds specific rules in various APs for
of agile QoS provisioning. In an SDN network, bandwidth packet scheduling without modifying the conventional DCF
allocation, rate limiting, and traffic shaping can be efficiently mechanism. Lee et al. in [183] extend the SDN controller
implemented at the network level through automated QoS network to mobile devices. It helps in achieving real-time
network APIs via the network controller. Real-time measure- detection of QoS demands in a network and can provide end-
ments can help to steer policies that can efficiently enforce to-end QoS control.
the QoS mechanisms in real time [208]. QoS policies can be In [186], the QoS measurements are taken at the service
deployed at the controller and the wastage of resources can be level and the network level. At the network level, the data
minimized. In a SDN-enabled network, several controllers in flows from a source to a destination along the same path. This
a single area can communicate with each other to exchange helps the media to be delivered in the best possible path and
network information. This communication allows the users to service configuration. In return, the overall QoS for the users
connect with APs, regardless of their operators, thus improving is improved. SDNs are proposed to combine the configurations
the user’s quality of experience (QoE). An AP that receives of network elements and end hosts. This enables network
packets with a destination address of another network can operators to define their own set of rules to control the traffic
forward the packets flexibly through rules defined at the routing and QoS.
controller [209]. The QoS routing significantly affects the overall through-
Ishimori et al. [184] proposed a QoS solution called QoS- put of a network. The major portion of Internet traffic is
Flow for OpenFlow-based SDN networks through the appro- composed of best-effort traffic. Therefore, an efficient QoS
priate control of packet scheduling. OpenFlow is an archetypal routing algorithm must take into account the existence of best-
SDN protocol used for implementing the architectural vision effort traffic and its impact on the overall performance. The
of separated control and data planes. OpenFlow implements OpenFlow controllers can generate flow tables to manage the
a protocol used by the SDN controller to communicate with QoS within a network using different routing protocols [212].
controlled devices. OpenFlow provides basic QoS primitives The controller performs additional functions of QoS contract
including support of only FIFO scheduling which may be management and QoS route management. The controller also
insufficient for some applications like multimedia streaming. polls switches to report on the congestion level in the network.
QoS support for OpenFlow is improving: queues are available
in OpenFlow 1.0 which enables traffic shaping, while in the B. Cloud-based Wireless Networks (CbWNs)
latest version, namely OpenFlow 1.3, rate limiting can be
supported through meter tables. This paper proposed QoSFlow The main idea of cloud computing is to offer computing
as a QoS development strategy that relies on multiple packet services (e.g., networks, storage, applications)—provisioned
schedulers for OpenFlow supported networks to overcome the through APIs via the web from a shared pool of resources—in
limitations of FIFO packet scheduling. QoSFlow can provide a virtualized data center in utility computing style [213]. The
control for the following packet schedulers: hierarchical token capability to program a network through the cloud/SDN archi-
bucket (HTB), random early detection (RED) and stochastic tectures allow revolutionary dynamism in service provisioning,
fair queueing (SFQ). network management and control. The trend of CbWNs is
OpenQoS [185] is an OpenFlow controller designed for to extend the cloud computing concept to wireless networks
supporting multimedia flows with end-to-end QoS require- [206]. An illustration of the CbWN architecture is shown in
ments. It enables QoS by placing multimedia traffic on QoS- Figure 4. Some salient advantages of CbWNs are described
guaranteed routes. OpenQoS presents a new dynamic QoS next.
routing scheme that maintains the shortest path for the data • Centralized Management: A major application of CbWNs
delivery, which helps in minimizing packet loss and latency. is centralized remote management of wireless networks.
The results show that the network turbulence has a minimal The control and provisioning of wireless access points
effect on video quality with QoS support. On the other hand, (CAPWAP) protocol—defined by IETF in RFC 5415
the videos without QoS support suffer significantly from [214]—is a control and management (C&M) protocol that
quality degradation. aims at migrating functionalities from the hardware AP
A dynamic framework for ensuring QoS in streaming videos equipment to an external controller potentially managed
at the control plane is presented in [210]. The scheme works via the cloud. There exists significant interest in the
in the OpenFlow-based networks by optimizing forwarding research community in proposing efficient approaches for
 18

suggested model gives more precise assessment, compared to

existing analytical models.

WLANs deployed by large firms or universities can com-

pose of hundreds or even thousands of APs. Similarly the size
of the operating system of an AP also increases with time
due to the inclusion of software packages in each release.
Therefore, it is getting harder for the network administrators
to configure each AP individually. Reducing complexity of
networking appliances and uncovering data flow management
tasks via standardized interfaces and high-level programming
primitives are some of the main concepts of SDN. In [193],
the authors present a resource allocation mechanism based on
the cloud environments, as well as an energy-aware model for
the data centers.
Fig. 4. Cloud-based Wireless Networks (CbWNs) [206]. To obtain similar advantages in WLANs, Dely et al. in-
troduced CloudMAC [197], which is a novel management
architecture in which access points redirect MAC frames only.
central management of Wi-Fi networks [194]. Various The rest of the functionalities, like the processing of MAC
industrial solutions, such as Meraki Networks [215] from data or management frames, is executed in typical servers that
Cisco, Aruba Networks [216], and AeroHive, have also are operated in data centers and can be allocated via cloud
been proposed to perform cloud-based management of computing infrastructure. OpenFlow is used to organize the
WLANs. flow and transmission characteristics of MAC frames.
• Zero-Touch Auto-Configuration: The centralized manage- In another work, Chun et al. proposed CloneCloud
ment paradigm of CbWNs can allow plug and play zero- which allows unmodified mobile applications running in an
touch auto-configuration of wireless APs allowing the application-level virtual memory (VM) to seamlessly offload
APs to function without any manual configuration by part of its execution from the mobile devices onto device
the network administrator. The centralized management clones operating in the cloud [195]. The ability to offload
of wireless networks also allow cloud-based performance computation can be exploited in a QoS framework to meet
management and the use of advanced data analytics for stringent deadlines.
optimization performance including real-time reconfigu-
C. Cognitive Wireless Networks (CWN)
ration of wireless parameters.
Cognitive wireless networks (CWNs) are next-generation
QoS efforts for IEEE 802.11-based CbWNs: Most of the wireless networks—that demonstrate network-wide intelligent
devices used for cloud computing applications are portable behavior—in which network nodes are incorporated with cog-
and are connected through IEEE 802.11 WLAN. The WiFi nitive engines (see Figure 5) consist of substantial artificial
access network may not be able to cope with the need of intelligence (AI) approaches in the form of machine learning,
providing services to QoS-assured cloud multimedia applica- knowledge reasoning, optimization, and natural language pro-
tions. In particular, when the devices are in motion, QoS-aware cessing [222] [223]. Such networks are composed of network
handover should take into account the traffic load and cur- nodes equipped with cognitive radios (CR), which display
rently accessible bandwidth at each location at particular AP device-level intelligent behavior.
with high precision. Consequently, a precise modeling of the Along with network-level reconfiguration capabilities af-
genuine surroundings of IEEE 802.11 WLAN is important for forded by technologies such as SDN which can be used to
proficient QoS-aware cloud service provisioning. Tursunova et realize programmable data plane and programmable control
al. proposed a pragmatic IEEE 802.11e EDCA model for QoS- plane, future wireless programmable networking will also
aware differentiated multimedia cloud service provisioning in implement some variant of a “knowledge plane” [224]. Tra-
WLAN networks [192]. ditionally, a network of nodes equipped with CRs is called a
Most of the previous work concentrated on the analysis of cognitive radio network (CRN) with the dominant application
EDCA in saturated and non-saturated states. In [217] [218] of CR technology being dynamic spectrum access (DSA),
[219] [220] [221], the authors examine only clean channel which can resolve the ‘artificial spectrum scarcity’ problem
surroundings, with an assumption that the frame error is resulting from the classic command-and-control licensing ap-
caused by packet collision only, while in real surroundings, proach [225] adopted in various countries around the world.
frame errors may take place due to channel noise. In [192], the Since CRNs inherently embody AI techniques with wireless
authors considered the time-varying frame error probability communications, it seems natural to explore using CRs to
of independent stations. They strengthened the mathematical provide mechanisms for implementing the knowledge plane
model of IEEE 802.11e [221] by using the calculated packet of future programmable wireless devices.
error probability, which may be caused by frame collisions While the bulk of CRN work has focused on enabling
and channel noise. Experimental outcomes show that the device-level intelligent behavior, the concept of CWNs, ini-
 19

the MAC layer for QoS provisioning in CRNs.

There has also been work in using cognitive technologies
to facilitate QoS-aware coexistence among multiple 802.11
WLANs, between 802.11 and 802.16 networks [230] [200],
and between 802.11 WLANs and overlay networks [204].

IX. O PEN R ESEARCH I SSUES AND F UTURE W ORK

QoS enhancement schemes in modern wireless-based net-
works still need further attention. This section highlights some
of the important issues.

A. Convergence of Different Technologies

Wireless technologies are proliferating at a breakneck pace,
Fig. 5. Cognitive wireless networks (CWN) include an embedded cognitive and in such a dynamic ecosystem, technologies that facili-
engine which can observe network conditions, orient itself with the context,
learn from experience, and decide to act [206]. tate multi-technology convergence is becoming increasingly
important. In the future, IEEE 802.11-based networks will
increasingly coexist with other wireless technologies such
as 4G/5G, WiMAX, RFID, Internet of Things (IoT), wire-
tially proposed in [226], generalizes CRNs and emphasizes less sensor networks, etc. As an example, 5G—expected to
network-level intelligence and self-aware behavior. While DSA materialize by 2020—will be highly integrative and will tie
is the most popularly cited application of CRNs, developing Wi-Fi with other wireless mobile standards such as 3G and
network-level intelligence in CRNs enables numerous other LTE [231]. IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks is facing
applications—including the ability to reprogram itself opti- stiff competition from other technologies that coexist in the
mally according to network conditions. unlicensed spectrum space, such as the IEEE 802.16-based
In previous CRN research, it has been observed that PHY wireless metropolitan area networks. Management of han-
and MAC layers offer many “knobs” that can be tweaked to dover, spectrum sharing, coexistence, and interworking of di-
optimize performance which can be measured through some verse technologies, become important for ensuring QoS. There
“meters”. In [225], many examples of knobs and meters at will be a lot of interest in QoS-aware spectrum sharing and
the PHY and MAC layers have been provided. Since CRNs coexistence between IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks
operate in dynamic, often unknown, conditions, configuring and other technologies. This entails work at various layers
the knobs optimally is not a trivial problem. Various AI-based including the potential use of multi-path TCP at the transport
techniques have been proposed in the literature to assist CRNs layer for improving QoS by exploiting multi-homing with
in their quest of performing autonomous optimal adaptations a diverse range of wireless networks, such as Wi-Fi and
in such settings. Apart from AI techniques, CRN also borrows 3G. More research needs to be done to ensure QoS in such
techniques and tools from various other fields such as game environments where heterogeneous technologies exist.
theory, control theory, optimization theory, metaheuristics, etc.
[223].
B. Context-Awareness and QoE
Game theory has been used in various work to model,
To improve the QoS and QoE, it is imperative for re-
analyze, and develop QoS solutions for CRNs. Berlemann
searchers to seamlessly incorporate user preferences, and
et al. [227] have proposed the use of radio resource sharing
awareness of context, which can be based on identity, location,
games to enable distributed QoS solutions in unlicensed bands
time, or activity, into IEEE-based networks. Since the end
shared by multiple users. Attar et al. proposed a game-theoretic
user’s traffic varies with time, traffic behavior should be
resource allocation framework that guarantees QoS in a DSA
analyzed to predict the future traffic patterns and subsequently
environment (in which the primary network is assumed to be
to adopt appropriate strategies. This helps in fulfilling the
OFDM-based cellular network). The QoS is defined by the
requirement of end devices with higher efficiency. Also, since
minimum rate available to the primary network and the target
the wireless networks are mobile, so predicting the future
BER.
locations of nodes helps in data forwarding, and thus reducing
Optimization theory has also been used in the literature to
the overall delay. If the future location of a node can be
address the problem of QoS-constrained dynamic spectrum
predicted from its mobility pattern and its speed, this helps in
access. For example, Xing et al. [228] considered QoS dif-
successful delivery of packets. Capturing the mobility patterns
ferentiation for various unlicensed users while incorporating
and its behavior ensure enhanced QoS.
interference temperature constraints assuming a spectrum un-
derlay access (alternatively, known as a shared-use model). In
addition, various cross-layered solutions have been developed C. Challenges due to Virtualization
for ensuring QoS in CRNs. For example, Su and Zhang [229] Virtualization has transformed both operational efficiency
proposed a distributed cross-layered solution incorporating and the economics of the computing industry, and more
spectrum sensing at the PHY layer and packet scheduling at recently, the data center environment. With the growing role
 20

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