Performance Analysis of QoS supported by Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) mechanism in IEEE 802.11e

With fast deployment of wireless local area networks (WLANs), the ability of WLAN to support real time services with stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements has come into fore. In this paper, we evaluate the capability of QoS support in Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) mechanism of the IEEE 802.11e standard, which is the medium access control (MAC) enhancements for QoS support in 802.11.EDCA mechanism allow prioritized medium access for applications with high QoS requirements by assigning different priorities to its four access categories. Its performance is evaluated under real time audio and video traffic through simulations using Network Simulator-2(NS 2), parameters like mean delay, throughput are calculated and graphs has been plotted. Simulation results show that EDCA mechanism provides satisfactory service differentiation among its four access categories. With EDCA mechanism, network capacity is effectively increased to better support real-time audio and video transmissions