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Traffic-Aware Link Rate Adaptation for Multi-rate 802.11 Networks

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Abstract

802.11 networks provide multi-rate capability to offer rate adaptability against the time-varying wireless channel. However, how to switch between the available rates has not been standardized. Existing rate adaptation (RA) solutions assume common transmission power and can only passively tune link rate to match the inferred channel condition via different methods. This simple attitude is neither flexible in traffic-aware link rate selection nor effective in energy conservation and spatial reuse since transmission power may be either too low to sustain the link rate or too high that results in unnecessary energy consumption and worse spatial reuse. Different from existing solutions, we think that link rate switch should be driven by traffic load and power control should be considered with rate adaptation together to conserve energy and increase spatial reuse. To this end, we propose a traffic-aware link rate adaptation scheme (TARA) via power control for multi-rate 802.11 networks. Its basic idea consists of a two-step procedure. Firstly, traffic load is sensed in the MAC layer to decide whether link rate should be increased or decreased for the next transmission. Afterwards, power control is carried out in the PHY layer to guarantee that the new link rate can be sustained while minimizing the transmission power. Extensive simulation results show that TARA outperforms typical existing schemes in terms of energy efficiency and throughput.

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Notes

  1. Original 802.11 supports 2 rates: 1, 2 Mbps; 802.11a and 802.11g both support 8 rates: 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, 54 Mbps; 802.11b supports 2 rates: 5.5, 11 Mbps.

  2. The aggregate e2e transmission rate equals to the total e2e transmission rate of all destinations in the network, and is also named as network throughput in the literature.

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Acknowledgments

The work of Xin Ao and Huaqiang Yuan is supported by Chinese National Science Foundation under Grant 61170216 and Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province under Grant S2011010005586.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering and Technology Institute, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan, People’s Republic of China

    Xin Ao & Huaqiang Yuan

  2. Marine Internet Laboratory (MILAB), College of Information Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Shengming Jiang

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  1. Xin Ao
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  2. Shengming Jiang
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  3. Huaqiang Yuan
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Correspondence to Xin Ao.

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Ao, X., Jiang, S. & Yuan, H. Traffic-Aware Link Rate Adaptation for Multi-rate 802.11 Networks. Wireless Pers Commun 72, 2155–2175 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-013-1141-9

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