A Cognitive Tuning of Contention Windows in WiFi Infrastructure Networks

In WiFi networks, mobile nodes compete for accessing a shared channel by means of a random access protocol called Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). Although this protocol is in principle fair, since it should guarantee that all the stations have the same probability to transmit on the channel, it has been shown that unfair behaviors may emerge in actual networking scenarios. These phenomena are due to different reasons, including non-standard configurations of the nodes, critical network topologies, and short-term performance observations. In this paper we propose a game-theoretic approach for defining an enhanced DCF scheme suitable for WiFi intelligent nodes employing cognitive fun…