Queuing Theory Based Co-Channel Interference Analysis Approach for High-Density Wireless Local Area Networks

Increased co-channel interference (CCI) in wireless local area networks (WLANs) is bringing serious resource constraints to today’s high-density wireless environments. CCI in IEEE 802.11-based networks is inevitable due to the nature of the carrier sensing mechanism however can be reduced by resource optimization approaches. That means the CCI analysis is basic, but also crucial for an efficient resource management. In this article, we present a novel CCI analysis approach based on the queuing theory, which considers the randomness of end users’ behavior and the irregularity and complexity of network traffic in high-density WLANs that adopts the M/M/c queuing model for CCI analysis. Most of the CCIs occur when multiple networks overlap and trigger channel contentions; therefore, we use the ratio of signal-overlapped areas to signal coverage as a probabilistic factor to the queuing model to analyze the CCI impacts in highly overlapped WLANs. With the queuing model, we perform simulations to see how the CCI influences the quality of service (QoS) in high-density WLANs.