LiTE4DCB: A Lightweight Throughput Estimation for Heterogeneous Dynamic Channel Bonding WLANs based on Continuous-Time Markov Chain

Dynamic Channel Bonding (DCB) is a channel access scheme of Channel Bonding (CB) in IEEE 802.11n/ac Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) that allows devices to dynamically combine a 20 MHz channel with adjacent channels to increase the bandwidth for data transmission. Although numerous studies have explored the throughput estimation of WLAN using DCB (DCB-WLANs) with high accuracy, a research gap still exists, as these works tend to disregard practical considerations, such as backward compatibility and computation time. In response to this gap, in this paper, a lightweight throughput estimation algorithm is studied for heterogeneous DCB-WLANs with the coexistence of legacy nodes (operating only on a single channel) and bonding-able nodes (supporting 802.11n/ac) under various traffic load demands. In particular, Continuous-Time Markov Chain (CTMC) is applied to model the airtime occupancy ratio of nodes. By analyzing the airtime occupancy behavior, the LiTE4DCB algorithm was proposed to estimate the throughput of the nodes at a low computational cost. For the evaluation, LiTE4DCB was compared with the existing Numerical Solving method of the CTMC model (NS-CTMC) in terms of estimation accuracy and computation time. The experiment results showed that LiTE4DCB can achieve close throughput estimations with NS-CTMC but requires less computational time. With an increasing number of nodes, LiTE4DCB required negligible additional time, whereas the time required for NS-CTMC increased exponentially.