IEEE 802.11ah is an approved amendment to IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) standard to support growing demand for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. To enable an efficient scheme for accessing the channel by a large number of stations (STAs) within the coverage of an access point, 802.11ah has developed a novel mechanism known as Restrictred Access Window (RAW). Here, a group of STAs attempts channel access during their designated RAW slot by following the carrier sense multiple access-collission avoidance (CSMA-CA)-based enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism. In this paper, we develop an analytical model for finding the nonsaturation/saturation throughput of 802.11ah WLAN under the RAW-based channel access mechanism. We describe an analytical model for finding the average frame delay as well. The impact of the number of STAs and number of groups on network throughput and average delay are presented. We establish that the RAW mechanism can improve the throughput while the average frame delay gets reduced. The analytical results are validated by extensive simulation studies.
KEYWORDSframe delay, IEEE 802.11ah, restricted access window, throughput, wireless LAN Int J Commun Syst. 2019;32:e3888. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/dac U AND AV (Zigbee, 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, Bluetooth, or even proprietary radio solutions) are considered for sending data in common M2M cases. But, neither of those systems has predominated due to the heterogeneity present and the complexity of the applications and environments. The M2M communications are presently supported by GPRS/EDGE networks as well. Concurrently, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is operating for the promotion of M2M applications in the 4G broadband mobile networks, like UMTS and LTE, with the intention of proposing M2M communications for the forthcoming 5G systems.Use of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) technology has recently become attractive for M2M communications, because of the fact that Wi-Fi devices can operate with unlicensed spectrum, and such devices have been widely deployed throughout. However, the carrier sense multiple access -collission avoidance (CSMA-CA)-based MAC protocol employed by the legacy 802.11 WLAN, (ie, distributed Coordination function [DCF] or the enhanced distributed channel access [EDCA]), allows all the stations in the network to contend the channel simultaneously for getting the transmission opportunity (TXOP). As the number of competing stations (STAs) increase, the DCF and EDCA protocols become quite ineffective since the collision probability becomes very high leading to severe degradation of the network throughput. [2][3][4][5] The IEEE 802.11ah Task Group (TGah) formed in 2010, addresses the requirement for an M2M standard in wireless communication to support the growing demand for M2M applications. The TGah has recently formulated modified PHY and MAC layer protocols for the realization of an unlicensed sub1GHz WLAN standard for M2M communications promoting a wide range of s...