A frame aggregation scheduler for QoS-sensitive applications in IEEE 802.11n WLANs

The IEEE 802.11n standard promises to extend todays most popular WLAN standard by significantly increasing reach, reliability, and throughput. Ratified on september 2009, this standard defines many new physical and medium access control (MAC) layer enhancements. These enhancements aim to provide a data transmission rate of up to 600 Mbps. The frame aggregation mechanism of 802.11n MAC layer can improve the efficiency of channel utilization by reducing the protocol overheads. In this paper we investigate the effect of frame aggregation on the support of voice and video applications in wireless networks. We also propose a new frame aggregation scheduler that considers specific QoS requirements for multimedia applications. We dynamically adjust the aggregated frame size based on frame's access category defined in 802.11e standard.