IEEE P802.11 - TASK GROUP E - MEETING UPDATE:

Status of Project IEEE 802.11e

MAC Enhancements for Quality of Service

The purpose of Task Group E is to: Enhance the current 802.11 MAC to expand support for applications with Quality of Service requirements, and in the capabilities and efficiency of the protocol.

July, 2005, San Francisco, CA, USAnew.gif (468 bytes)

After six successful sponsor recirculation ballots (ending with 99% approval), 802.11e-D13.0 was forwarded to RevCom for final approval and publication by the standards association.  The work of Task Group E is completed, and no additional meetings will be held.

May, 2004, Anaheim, CA, USA


802.11e Anaheim Report           
May 14,2004
Sponsor Ballot Report

Next meeting goal to complete comment resolution and issue new draft for recirculation.



January 13 - 17, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA


The latest letter Ballot for TGe (LB#51) closed on January 8, 2003 and received an approval rating of 83%. During the January meeting the Task Group worked on comment resolution of the received comments through LB#51.

The Task Group has announced an Ad-hoc meeting between February 24 and 27 , 2003 in Portland OR. to continue with comment resolution.

It is expected that the results of the Ad-hoc meeting will be discussed at the March plenary and the Task Group will continue addressing the comments.

If the resolution process completes by the end of the March meeting it is anticipated to issue a recirculation Ballot.


November 11 - 15, 2002, Hyatt Regency Kauai, Kauai, HI, USA

At the November meeting, Task Group E concentrated on completing comment resolutions and preparing a new draft for letter ballot.
Comment resolutions from previous meetings (in document 02/649) were reviewed. A number of resolutions that had been processed during the inter-meeting teleconferences were presented to the group and accepted without objections.

Specific motions that were adopted with an effect on the draft:

A PICS was proposed that would make both centralized and distributed channel access methods optional. This generated a lot of discussion, since it would enable conformant but non-interoperable implementations. Straw polls were taken, asking who would vote "No" on a draft with each of the combinations of mandatory and optionality for the access methods. The polls indicated the lowest number of "No" votes would result from a draft with both access methods mandatory. An ad-hoc group was formed to work on the PICS. The group developed document 769 as a proposed PICs. After further discussion, an additional motion to amend the draft was made: Further motions: Comment resolution response: Sending the new draft to Letter Ballot:

September 9-13, 2002, Hyatt Regency Monterey, Monterey, CA, USA

At the September meeting, TGe continued to resolve the issues that caused No votes on Letter Ballot 39. Two consolidated proposals were developed before the meeting, addressing multiple issues that were identified in the comments on LB39. The "TGe Fast Track Proposal" was merged with the "Wireless Multimedia Enhancements" proposal to form the "TGe Consensus Proposal" (document 524r3).

Straw polls were taken to gauge the group's feelings on the contentious issues:
    *    The group favored removing FEC from the draft by a vote of 35 : 0 : 1
    *    The group favored removing the Mobile AP from the draft by a vote of  37 : 1 : 2
    *    The group favored support for polling to be mandatory in the AP by a vote of 23 : 6 : 6

The TGe Consensus Proposal contains:
    *    Improved eDCF
    *    HCF Polling
    *    Power Save extensions
    *    Direct Link Protocol (Optional)
    *    Burst Acknowledgments (Optional)
The proposal deletes the following from the draft
    *    Forward Error Correction (FEC)
    *    AP Mobility mechanisms
    *    Contention Control and Reservation Request (CC / RR) mechanisms

The proposal was presented to the body, and additional straw polls were taken:
    *    Should HCF Polling be mandatory at the AP? Yes, by a vote of 49 : 12 : 4
    *    Should a TGe letter ballot be issued before November? No, by a vote of 14 : 39 : 10
    *    Do you support the principles of the Consensus Proposal as the basis of a new TGe Draft? Yes, by a vote of  48 : 3: 15 (14 of 15 abstains needed more time to study the proposal)

The proposal was voted on, and the normative text for the consensus proposal (document 604r1) was adopted with a vote of 129 : 5 : 4.
A motion to instruct the editor to create a new draft (802.11E-D3.3) incorporating these changes was passed with a vote of 48 : 0 : 1.

A motion was passed to "Instruct the chair to send an email to the reflector identifying the state of TGe and the draft, and identifying that comments will not be specifically addressed, except at the request of the commenter. The chair is also instructed to note the situation in the next plenary session". The vote was 23 : 2 : 7.

The TGe minutes are in document 02/552r0.

July 8-12, 2002, Hyatt Regency Vancouver, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Letter Ballot 39 on 802.11e-D3.0 was conducted from May 23rd to July 2nd, 2002. It failed with the following results:
 

Yes 106 votes 49%
No 110 votes 51%
Abstain 44 votes 17%
At the July meeting, TGe started the process of resolving comments for LB39. The group focused on resolving comments submitted by no-voters with a single comment, in hopes of reversing a number of no-votes.

During the comment resolution process, the following motions with an effect on the draft were passed:

Comment ID 1763, 9.10.1
Resolution – Accept the comment and clarify why it is needed. The editor will provide the clarification.
Background: This relates to a harmless space. It was to account for an accumulated timing drift. Some thought it was to give the HC priority, which is not needed since it already has priority.
Accepted without objection

Comment 1540
Resolution – respond to the commenter that the issue has been debated, and the decision was made to delete the SDL.
Resolution accepted without objection.

Comment 1859
Requesting MAC state machines
We could declare the comment invalid since there is no proposed remedy.
The draft needs to have an annex C specifying the deletion of the SDL.
Each spec is allowed to use state machines to clarify the standard where the Task Group decides it needs to do so.
Respond to the commenter explaining that the group has decided to delete the SDL.
Resolution accepted with no objections.

Comment 1521
The MIB can be set to give priority to legacy stations. The concern is not well founded.
Suggested response.
Mechanisms exist in the draft to permit, by way of modification to MIB and other parameters, legacy or best effort traffic to gain access to the medium at arbitrary priority. However, the group considers it undesirable to do so as this is contrary to the purpose of the QoS mechanism. An admission control function at a higher layer may also be used to ensure a minimum level of service for best effort traffic.
Straw poll – who likes the resolution?: 15:1 Resolution accepted without objection

Comment 1520
Comment calls for an informative section on usage models..
Proposed resolution:
Accept the suggested remedy. Form an ad hoc to write the informative text.
Accepted without objection

Comment 1552
“QAP: why required only 4 queues for QAP? I think that QAP should be required to have 8 queues.”
The group notes that the implementation is not constrained.
Suggested Remedy:
We decline the comment and delete the line (mandating the QAP having multiple queues) in the draft in both occurrences.
Accepted without objection

Comment 366, EDCF Parameter Set
Motion Move to instruct the editor to modify the normative text to insert a “should” clause referring to the EDCF parameter set element, indicating that this is intended to set policy and should be change by an AP only rarely. Vote: passes 33:7:15

Load Element
Move to adopt the editing instructions described in document 11-02-482r0.
Vote: Passes 23:0:2

MAC Architecture
Motion: Instruct the editor to incorporate 02/439r0 into the next TGe draft.
Vote : Passes 37:1:0

Priority Mapping
Motion to instruct the editor to make the following changes: Change 6.1.1.1 as follows: delete the words “(highest)” and “(lowest)”; add the footnote: “Using the mapping between user priorities and traffic types, found in 802.1D Annex H.2, above the MAC SAP is recommended”; Remove the traffic type names in Table D.1
Vote: Passes 40:0:1

TS Signaling with Roaming
Motion: To instruct the editor to incorporate the editing changes made in 7.3.2.18 in document 02/407r1 into the next TGe draft.
Vote: Passes 18:1:18

Primitives for Burst Ack
Motion: Instruct the editor to incorporate 436r0 into the next version of the TGe draft
Vote: Passes 16:3:20

TGe also passed a motion to create a new version of the draft incorporating these resolutions. That draft will be 802.11e-D3.2.
The TGe minutes are in document 02/443r0.
Comment resolution will continue at the September meeting in Monterey.

May 13-17, 2002, Wentworth Rydges Hotel, Sydney, NSW, Australia

At the May meeting, TGe continued to process comments from letter ballot 30. Srini Kandalas was selected as the Managing Editor, who will coordinate the input from an editorial team and reviewers.

The comment resolution ad-hoc groups continued to meet. A new draft 802.11E-D3.0 was prepared with all the comment resolutions, and was issued for a letter ballot.

The session minutes are in document 02-317.

The following motions having an effect on the draft were passed:

Example of FEC Frame Encoding
2.3.1. Motion that TGe adopt the text contained in 11-02/324r0, with any appropriate changes arising from other motions, to be included as an informative annex in the draft..  Passes with Unanimous Consent

Burst Ack Priority
2.3.2. Motion to modify the draft to specify the management and all types of burst ack control frames be sent at the highest priority. Passes with Unanimous Consent.

Parameter Set Update
2.3.3.4 Motion that TGe incorporate the normative text from document 02/341r0a into the draft with the amendment proposed on slide 6 replacing "TBD ms" with "one beacon interval". Passes 27: 8: 9

TClas Element
2.3.5. Move to remove the TClas element and all references thereto from the draft. Passes 26 : 7 : 10

Tspec
2.3.6. Move to instruct the editor to include an informative annex to describe how a TSpec could be generated from information passed to the MAC. John Kowalski is volunteering to write this. Passes with Unanimous Consent.

Queue State Element
5.8.4. Motion - to rescind the motion 9.1.2.5 from November 2001: "instruct the editor to incorporate the normative text in document 01/597r1 into the draft". Passes 29 : 8 : 7

TSpecs
6.2.2. Motion: to instruct the editor to include normative text defined by 02/348r1 into the TGe draft. Passes with Unanimous Consent

Power Management
6.2.3. Motion: remove the text "that initiated the frame exchange sequence" from the first sentence of clause 7.1.3.1.7 which states, "The Power Management field is 1 bit in length and is used to indicate the power management mode of the (Q)STA that initiated the frame exchange sequence". Passes 31: 0: 1

In addition, a number of specific comments were accepted by votes in the committee. These are detailed in the minutes.

The TGe committee reviewed the updates to the draft on Thursday evening, and voted to issue a new draft, D3.0 by a vote of 33 : 0 : 1. The Task Group then voted 32 : 0 : 2 to request the Working Group to issue D3.0 as a Letter Ballot.

Teleconferences will be conducted on the topic of the FEC Scrambler.

March 11 - 15, 2002, Hyatt Regency St Louis, St Louis, Missouri

At the March meeting, TGe continued to process comments from letter ballot 30. The comment resolution ad-hoc groups continued to meet, and formed resolutions for groups of comments. The session minutes are in document 02-162.

The following motions having an effect on the draft were passed:

Mapping of User Priorities to Access Categories
Move to Instruct the editor to adopt the normative text in 02-241r0.  Unanimous

Multiple MSDU transmission during EDCF TXOP:
Allow a multiple MSDU or MMPDU transmission during an EDCF TXOP within the limit of dot11CPCFBlimit[UP].
Motion: to instruct the editor to adopt the normative text in document 02-185r0. Passes 25: 8 : 6

FEC
Motion to incorporate the updated text relating to the FEC in section 7.3.2.15 in D2.0a into the draft. Unanimous

AP Mobility
Move to instruct the editor to edit the TGe draft, reversing the editing instructions in 11-02-066r3 and following the editing instructions in 11-02-066r9. Unanimous

AP Mobility
Move to instruct the editor to edit the TGe draft following the editing instruction in document 02/236r0, with the exception of the instructions for Annex D. Passes 28 : 1 : 6

FEC
Motion to make the QoS Control Field consistent with the FEC Text that was approved yesterday. Unanimous

AP Mobility
Move to instruct the editor to edit the TGe draft following the editing instructions in 11-02-236r2 relating to Annex D, additionally inserting the word “reserved” for all parameters relating to unused TCs and replacing MaxCFBlength with dot11CPCFBlimit, and further, replacing the value of dot11CPCFBlimit for TC=5 with 0.5”. Unanimous

Burst Ack
Instruct the editor to incorporate the text in the document 02/135r7 into the draft. Unanimous

Frame Formats
Motion: instruct the TGe editor to incorporate the resolutions for the first two lines from the table in 02/257r0 into the draft. Unanimous

SDL in Annex C
Motion: replace contents of Annex C, except the title, with the note “This annex has been removed and the content is not relevant to this standard”, and delete all references to Annex C contained in clause 9 and annex A.    Passes 40 : 0 : 2

Miscellaneous Resolutions
Move to adopt the resolutions marked as resolved in document 02-084r9 excluding comment 1128, 1514, and 1527, except for resolutions marked “duplicate” that reference unresolved comments, and those in conflict with the motions adopted and recorded in the meeting minutes of TGe between January 1, 2002, and March 15, 2002. If there are contradictions within the document, the editor is instructed to take no action on the conflicting resolutions, and report it back to the group. Passes 38 : 0 : 1

Approximately 80% of the comments have been resolved. The Task Group passed a motion to enable continued comment resolution work at the May meeting, and to authorize the issue of a Letter Ballot on the updated draft.

Ad-Hoc teleconferences will scheduled to continue comment resolutions before the next meeting in May.

January 21-25, 2002, Wyndham Anatole, Dallas, Texas

At the January meeting, we began processing comments resulting from letter ballot 30. There were over 2000 comments received.
The comments were subdivided into areas, and papers and presentations were given to address the comments.
A number of motions were made to instruct the editor to modify the draft.
Despite the work of the editing team during the meeting, it was not possible to incorporate all the changes to the draft resulting from motions that were accepted during the meeting. No new draft was available to send to letter ballot.

To continue the comment resolution process between meetings, ad-hoc comment resolution teams will conduct teleconferences. Teleconferences will be announced on the email reflector.

The Burst Ack group is led by Srini Kandalas
The HCF group is led by Jin Meng Ho
The AP Mobility group is led by Adrian Stephens
The MAC Frames group is led by Matthew Sherman
The FEC group is led by Sunghyun Choi
The OBSS group is led by Matthew Sherman (and will commence after the completion of MAC Frames)
The "Everything Else" group is led by Keith Amman
The following motions having an effect on the draft were passed:

IEEE 802.11 WG - RESULTS of LETTER BALLOT 30 (closed January 16, 2002)
From the 266 voters on record, 221 votes were received, and 218 of these were valid votes.
Yes        101 votes                  54.6%
No           84 votes                  45.4%
Abstain     33 votes                 15.1%

November 12 - 16, 2001, Hyatt Regency Town Lake, Austin, Texas

At the November meeting, the objective was to release a new version of the draft to letter ballot. The group entertained motions and presentations related to Draft D1.4. A number of motions were made to instruct the editor to modify the draft.
An editing team was formed to assist the editor in incorporating the passed motions into the draft.

The following motions having an effect on the draft were passed:

Motions were passed to request the 802.11 WG to schedule joint sessions combining TGe and TGi, and joint sessions combining TGe and TGh.
A motion was passed to empower the January 2002 meeting of TGe to be able to ask the working group to issue a letter ballot..

The editing team consolidated the changes resulting from the previous motions into a new draft, which was reviewed by the group and voted on.

  • Approval of draft D2.0 for Letter Ballot

    • Motion – to instruct the editor to create 802.11e draft standard revision D2.0 from the contents of D1.9-1, and thereafter ask the 802.11 WG to create a letter ballot requesting the WG to forward the 802.11e draft standard D2.0 to sponsor ballot. (Passes 35:2:6)
    The AV Study Group, which is investigating issues related to Audio and Video with 802.11e, met during two TGe sessions.

    P802.11E-D1.4 DRAFT Information

    P802.11E-D1.4 is a Word file for a rendition of the TGe draft without revision marks and changes from the base standard highlighted. This “clean” rendition is labeled as D1.4, and nominally has the same content as D1.3.  Please note that generation of D1.4 was MUCH more involved than just accepting the revisions relative to D1.0, because there were 6 different symbologies used, 2 via the revision facility, 2 via character styles, and 2 via text attributes, and the latter 4 had to be backed out manually. (Although, the problems I actually encountered were with the Word revisions, some of which changed paragraph styles from “body” to “header N” when the revisions were accepted!) I was reasonably careful while making this update, but D1.4 HAS NOT had the same careful consistency check that D1.3 received.

    Michael Fischer - Editor - Task Group e

    P802.11E-D1.3 DRAFT Information

    Latest posting of Task Group e Draft D1.3 and Comment Resolution Documents  -  10/17/01

    July 9 - 13, 2001, Portland Marriott Downtown, Portland, Oregon

    At the July meeting, the group continued to resolve comments from letter ballot 27. Papers and submissions were presented on subjects related to the resolution of comments. A number of motions were made to instruct the editor to modify the draft.
    The following motions having an effect on the draft were passed:
  • Motion – to instruct the editor to remove autonomous bursting from the draft. (Unanimous)
  • Motion – to instruct the editor to remove maxMSDUlifetime from the draft. (Passes 24:5:2)
  • Motion to draft normative text to add the aCWMax[TC] from the MIB to the EDCF information element. (Passes 11:7:17)
  • Motion to instruct the editor to delete all instances of and references to the remote hybrid coordinator and proxy beacons from the draft (Unanimous consent)
  • Motion – to instruct the editor to remove CF-MultiPoll from the draft. (passes 35:9:11)
  • Motion to instruct the editor to remove the permission probability field and all references to it from the CC/RR frames  (Passes 40:7:6)
  • Motion to instruct the editor to modify the draft according to the normative text found in document 01/481r0 (HCF NAV Rules) (Unanimous)
  • Motion to instruct the editor to modify the draft by modifying the normative text according to instructions in  01/412r1 (Aligning 802.11e HCF and 802.11h TPC Operations)  (Unanimous)
  • Motion to instruct the editor to remove all references to the container frames from the draft. (Unanimous)
  • Motion to instruct the editor to modify the draft using the normative text and editing instructions contained in 01/458r1 (FEC Capability and Control)  (Passes 48:0:5)
    • Motions were passed to empower the editor to create a new draft based on these changes, and to empower the Task Group to issue a Letter Ballot at the September Interim meeting.

    The AV Study Group, which is investigating issues related to Audio and Video with 802.11e, met during two TGe sessions.

    May 14 – 18, 2001, Radisson at Universal, Orlando, Florida

    At the March meeting, a motion was approved split MAC Enhancements into separate task groups for QoS and Security. At this meeting TGe QoS began operating completely independently from the TGi Security task group. Although the TGe QoS Letter Ballot 27 on Draft 1.0 (P802_11E-Q-D1_0.pdf) was not scheduled to close until after the May meeting, many comments had been received, and were processed during ad-hoc comment resolution sessions. Comments were categorized and resolutions recorded in documents 261 through 267:
    01/261    802.11e Letter Ballot 27 Comments Clause 3
    01/262    802.11e Letter Ballot 27 Comments Clause 5
    01/263R1  802.11e Letter Ballot 27 Comments Clause 6
    01/264    802.11e Letter Ballot 27 Comments Clause 7
    01/265    802.11e Letter Ballot 27 Comments Clause 9
    01/266    802.11e Letter Ballot 27 Comments Clause 11
    01/267    802.11e Letter Ballot 27 Comments - General
    Letter Ballot 27 closed on May 20th. There were 140 votes cast.
    The  results are:    Yes: 45 (38%)         No: 74 (62%)        Abstain: 21 (15%)

    TGe will hold five conference calls for the purpose of  continuing comment resolution on TGe letter ballot 27. The teleconferences have been scheduled for:  May 30, June 6, 13, 20, and 27. (Call in number 304-345-7354; Participants code 512895; Time 1:00PM EDST to 4:00PM EDST)

    A study group within TGe on the subject of AV Transport over 802.11e was started during the meeting. John Kowalski is the chair.

    TGe meeting minutes are in doc 01/238 Minutes of 802.11 Task Group E MAC Enhancements - QoS

    At the July meeting, TGe will complete the processing of letter ballot comments, and adopt the proposed resolutions by vote. Then a new draft incorporating the accepted changes will be generated, and another letter ballot will be issued.

    March 12 – 15, 2001, Marriott Hilton Head, Hilton Head Island, SC

    Task Group E adopted draft text and will conduct Letter Ballots for 802.11E QoS and 802.11E Security.

    There was considerable debate in the TGe QoS subgroup over the selection of the EDCF mechanism.  The VDCF proposal (document 131r1) was selected as the Enhanced Distributed Coordination Function (EDCF) and adopted into the baseline QoS draft D0.1.  The QoS Subgroup also adopted the Hybrid Coordination Function (HCF, document 110r1). These two components complete the functionality requirements for 802.11e. The resulting draft was approved to be sent to Letter Ballot, and upon approval, forwarding to Sponsor Ballot. TGe-QoS also adopted document 120r3 as the draft text for clause 7.5, specifying an optional FEC mechanism for 802.11e.

    TGe-Security forwarded revised PARs to the Standards Board to separate TGe-Security into a new task group. The TGe Security subgroup adopted document 01/018r4 as the TGe-Security Draft Text D1.0, and forwarded it to Letter Ballot, and upon approval, to Sponsor Ballot (under the new task group PAR, subject to approval of the new PAR).

    January 15 - 19, 2001, Hyatt Regency Monterey, Monterey, CA

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