Adaptive Optimization of Rate Adaptation Algorithms in Multi-Rate WLANs

— Rate adaptation is one of the basic functionalities in today’s 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs). Although it is primarily designed to cope with the variability of wireless channels and achieve higher system spectral efficiency, its design needs careful consideration of cross-layer dependencies, in particular, linklayer collisions. Most practical rate adaptations focus on the time-varying characteristics of wireless channels, ignoring the impact of link-layer collisions. As a result, they may lose their effectiveness due to unnecessary rate downshift wrongly triggered by the collisions. Some recently proposed rate adaptations use RTS/CTS to suppress the collision effect by differentiating collisions from channel errors. The RTS/CTS handshake, however, incurs significant overhead and is rarely activated in infrastructure WLANs. In this paper, we introduce a new approach for optimizing the operation of rate adaptations by adjusting the rate-increasing and decreasing parameters based o...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICNP
• Authors: Jaehyuk Choi, Jongkeun Na, Kihong Park, Chong-kwon Kim
• Keywords: ICNP 2007, Network Protocols, Practical Rate Adaptations, Rate Adaptations, Wireless Channels