Hybrid rate control mechanisms in IEEE 802.11 networks

Abstract

Over the time while IEEE 802.11 was developed, rate adaption algorithms had their own development stage. Most of rate adaption algorithms are not standardized and there are no rules on how one should operate. Therefore, this part of IEEE 802.11 is handled entirely by wireless vendors. Although, while IEEE 802.11 moved forward and introduced several performance increases with Quality of Service introduction, including IEEE 802.11ac wireless modulation and similar, rate control remained the same. Even now, IEEE 802.11ac re-uses the very first approach of rate control algorithm, because despite many attempts to improve the performance of rate control algorithms by introducing different methods to use statistical data for rate control knowledge, only few were successful in adding a difference in performance. This paper discusses hybrid rate control usage for IEEE 802.11. Most of the algorithms to this date are used on station device and on Access Point. In this paper we take a different approach and adapt a different rate control algorithm, which is based on the device operational mode, thus leveraging both the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) based algorithm capabilities and the Packet Error Rate (PER) capabilities. The performance of named approach is tested in outdoor environment, on the infrastructural network topology.