A Study on Frame Aggregation in Wireless Networks

Submitted By Mrs. Raule Megha B . M.E(CNE)

Under the Guidance Of Dr. Kasabegoudar V.G.

Abstract
The timing and headers overheads of IEEE 802.11 PHY and MAC layers consume a large part of the channel time leading to performance degradation especially at higher data rates. A key enhancement is frame aggregation in which the timing and headers overheads are reduced by aggregating multiple frames into a single large frame and then transmit it in a single channel access. This paper addresses the frame aggregation techniques that have been proposed for the next generation wireless networks.

Frame Aggregation
It has many benefits: first, transmitting large frame leads to higher throughput than transmitting small frames; second and most important benefit is the reduction of timing and header overheads that are required to transmit a frame by the MAC distributed coordination function.

Figure :The saved time when aggregation three frames

Frame Aggregation Approaches

Aggregation can be performed either at the packet level or at the frame level. It is called packet aggregation if it is performed at the higher layers such as IP and application layers. However, it is called frame aggregation if it is performed at the lower layers, PHY and MAC layers.

Aggregation at the MAC Layer

Aggregation at the MAC level is the widely used aggregation where the MAC headers overhead can be squeezed or even removed. Moreover, the channel access can be optimized by reducing the timing overhead such as backoff and message exchange overhead such as ACKs. Yang [11] proposed several MAC strategies to improve the throughput and reduce the overhead of the next generation wireless networks. The author proposed many techniques such as packing, concatenation and multiple frame transmission which adopt the idea of sending multiple frames in a single transmission.

A-MSDU
In this aggregation scheme, several MSDUs destined to the same receiver are concatenated in a single MPDU. This operation is performed at the top of the MAC layer where the incoming MSDUs are buffered and then concatenated in order to form the A-MSDU. The aggregation process is ended when the size of the buffered MSDUs reaches the maximum A-MSDU frame size or the delay of the oldest MSDU reaches the maximum delay limit.

Figure : A-MSDU frame structure.

A-MPDU
The aggregate MPDU combines multiple MPDUs in a single PHY protocol data unit (PPDU) frame. The A-MPDU frame consists of n subframes each subframe has a MAC header, delimiter of 4 bytes, variable-size MPDU, padding and frame check sequence.

Figure : A-MPDU frame structure.

Aggregation at the PHY Layer

The data units that are passed from the MAC layer to the PHY layer are called physical service data unit (PSDU) while the physical protocol data unit (PPDU) is a PSDU attached with PHY layer headers. Aggregation at the PHY layer can be performed over the PSDUs (APSDU) or PPDUs (A-PPDU) and would support transmission of multiple frames having different rates in the same burst.

A-PSDU
This scheme involves high overhead (4 s for each signaling filed) and the corruption in one bit of the signaling field will prevent the demodulation o f the remaining frame. In this scheme several PSDUs are aggregated and delimited by a physical signaling filed that indicates the duration of the next PSDU and the modulation coding scheme (MCS).

Figure : A-PSDU aggregation scheme

A-PPDU
A-PPDU aggregation consists of sequence of frames transmitted by a single station without intervening frames by any other station. The consecutive PPDUs are separated by interframe spacing. In this scheme, retaining both the MAC and PHY headers, makes the addressing to different destinations possible.

Figure : A-PPDU scheme.

Aggregation Schemes Comparison

Conclusions

Frame aggregation improves the throughput of the IEEE 802.11 wireless networks by concatenating multiple frames into a single frame and then transmits it. Frame aggregation can be categorized based on the place of aggregation into MAC level and PHY level aggregations. The A-MSDU and A-MPDU aggregations are preformed at the MAC layer whereas the APSDU and A-PPDU are performed at the PHY layer. These issues include the performance under unsaturated channels, the performance with TCP traffic, and the tradeoff between the efficiency and robustness in error-prone channels.

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