A Proposal for Dynamic Frequency Sharing in Wireless Networks

Wireless networks are today employed as com-

plementary access technology, implemented on the last hop

towards the Internet end-user. The shared media that wireless

deployments provide and which is relevant to interconnect

multiple users, has a limited technical design, as only one

device can be served per unit of time, design aspect which

limits the potential applicability of wireless in dense environ-

ments. This paper proposes and evaluates a novel MAC Layer

mechanism that extends current wireless networks with the

possibility to perform downstream transmission to multiple

devices within a single transmission time-frame, resulting in

improved fairness for all devices. The mechanism, which is

software defined, is backward compatible with current wireless

standards and does not require any hardware changes. The

solution has been validated in a realistic testbed and the paper

provides details concerning the computational aspects of our

solution; a description of the implementation; results extracted

under different realistic scenarios in terms of throughput,

packet loss, as well as jitter