We design and implement two variants of a practical random access protocol called WiFair, based on IEEE 802.11 and designed to mitigate spatial unfairness in Age of Information (AoI). Drawing on previous theoretical work, we modify the mechanics of 802.11 to fairly minimize AoI in a wireless network consisting of several update nodes and a single base station. We implement this protocol on a testbed of software defined radios (SDRs) and measure its performance under a variety of settings compared to standard 802.11. We observe a 32% reduction in network average AoI and an 89% reduction in peak AoI in a last come first served (LCFS) single-packet queue setting, as well as a 76% reduction in network average AoI and an 82% reduction in peak AoI in a first come first served (FCFS) queue setting when the network is congested. We further show that when the network is uncongested, WiFair achieves the same performance as 802.11, and we demonstrate its robustness to more bursty traffic by streaming live video.

翻译：我们基于IEEE 802.11设计并实现了两种WiFair实用随机接入协议变体，旨在缓解信息年龄（AoI）的空间不公平性。借鉴先前的理论工作，我们修改了802.11的机制，以在一个由多个更新节点和单个基站组成的无线网络中公平地最小化AoI。我们在软件定义无线电（SDR）测试平台上实现了该协议，并在多种设置下测量其性能，与标准802.11进行对比。在最后到达先服务（LCFS）单包队列设置中，我们观察到网络平均AoI降低了32%，峰值AoI降低了89%；在网络拥塞时，先到先服务（FCFS）队列设置中网络平均AoI降低了76%，峰值AoI降低了82%。我们进一步表明，当网络未拥塞时，WiFair能达到与802.11相同的性能，并通过流式传输实时视频证明了其对更突发性业务的鲁棒性。