Capacity Analysis of Opportunistic Channel Bonding over Multi-channel WLANs under Unsaturated Traffic

In this paper, we analytically study the performance of opportunistic multi-channel bonding protocol supporting delay-sensitive multimedia services. We consider a multi-channel system shared by IEEE 802.11ac users who can transmit over multiple channels and legacy users who can only transmit over one single channel. By analyzing the channel bonding behavior of IEEE 802.11ac users and the random access of legacy users, bonding probability and successful bonding probability of IEEE 802.11ac users can be derived. Furthermore, the access delays of both legacy and 802.11ac users are analyzed. According to the analytical results, the network capacity which quantifies the maximum number of multimedia flows that can be supported with guaranteed delay is then presented. Additionally, the impacts of different parameters such as traffic data rate on the network capacity are investigated. Our analytical results show that channel bonding is favorable when the secondary channels are underutilized. But channel bonding should be disabled when there are already intense contentions from legacy users. Based on the analytical results, we propose a heuristic bonding policy which can provide important guidelines to control the number of flows to satisfy the QoS requirement and achieve the maximum network capacity. Extensive simulations have been conducted to validate the analytical results.