Efficient adaptation of modulation and coding schemes in high quality home networks

Abstract

The increasing number of wireless devices exchanging high quality digital multimedia content within the home necessitates high rate, reliable transmission technologies, like IEEE 802.11n. Though providing very high throughput, IEEE 802.11n is not perfectly adapted to the requirements of a wireless multimedia transmission. However, the IEEE 802.11n amendment allows for efficient adaptation of modulation and coding schemes (MCS) to optimize achievable throughput and to fulfill quality of service requirements without any effort for the user. This paper describes an MCS adaptation scheme using information from both PHY and MAC layer with the objective to choose the optimal MCS in an autonomous, fast and robust way which can be applied to both a single link and an entire network. In contrast to existing adaptation schemes, it accounts for volatile channel conditions as well as increased collision probability in dense wireless home networks. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.