An Interference-Aware Rate and Channel Adaptation Scheme for Dense IEEE 802.11n Networks

Abstract EN

Rate adaptation, which dynamically chooses transmission rate provided at the physical layer according to the current channel conditions, is a fundamental resource management issue in IEEE 802.11 networks with the goal of maximizing the network throughput.

Traditional rate adaptation algorithms for IEEE 802.11n networks do not consider the interference problem, which becomes much more serious due to the rapid deployment of IEEE 802.11n devices and large number of mobile terminals.

In this paper, an interference-aware rate and channel adaptation scheme RaCA for intensive IEEE 802.11n networks was proposed.

Firstly, RaCA leverages RSSI and CSI information together to measure the current channel conditions at the receiver side.

RSSI is a coarse-grained indicator and CSI is a fine-grained indicator.

Secondly, a two-stage rate adaptation scheme TSRA was designed, which can quickly adapt to optimal bit rate based on RSSI and CSI information.

Finally, a quorum-based channel adaptation algorithm QCA was proposed, which does not need control channel.

If channel suffers severe interferences, RaCA calls QCA to choose another channel to work on.

Simulation and testbed implementation results demonstrate that RaCA achieves significant throughput gain over SampleLite and Minstrel-HT.