Enhancing TCP Airtime Fairness through Precise Computation for Upload and Download Flows in WiFi Networks

Abstract

Airtime fairness has emerged as a key approach to enhancing wireless throughput performance. However, existing research often overlooks the precise calculation of airtime, particularly in relation to TCP acknowledgments. This paper introduces a novel method, implemented on the access point side, for accurately calculating the airtime of TCP and UDP flows. Building on this, we propose a QoS-based scheduling algorithm designed to improve fairness between upload and download traffic. The effectiveness of the algorithm is validated through experiments that accurately measure both throughput and airtime for upload and download traffic.

Keywords

• WiFi
• airtime
• fairness
• QoS
• scheduling
• TCP