A Simple and Closed-Form Access Delay Model for Reliable IEEE 802.11-Based Wireless Industrial Networks

With the ongoing popularity of the IEEE 802.11 standard, many analytical studies for the distributed coordination function (DCF) have been reported but due to lack of a comprehensive model, the research has been going on. In this paper, three probabilistic analytical access delay models have been proposed for the IEEE 802.11 DCF mechanism in saturated traffic and noisy industrial applications. The first and second one provide an accurate packet delay model by solving non-linear equations at low and high Signal to Noise Ratios (SNRs) respectively. The third one on the other hand offers an approximate and simple closed-form model which does not need solving any non-linear equation and therefore can easily be utilized in the distributed adaptive network quality of service provisioning algorithms for industrial nodes which usually have limited processing capabilities. Delay-reliability, delay-packet payload and delay-data rate tradeoffs has also been studied. Simulation results match the theoretical derivations in most SNRs, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed models.