A Performance Evaluation for Rate Adaptation Algorithms in IEEE 802. 11 Wireless Networks

Abstract

The wireless LAN standards IEEE 802.11 (a/b/g) provides multi-rates capabilities. To achieve high network performance, devices need to adapt their transmission rate dynamically under varying conditions. Rate adaption algorithm is a critical component of their performance, only very a few algorithms have been published and the differences between their mechanisms have been publicly discussed. In this paper rate adaption algorithms categorized according to the metric that sender and/or receiver used to calculate the best bit rate uses to transmission date. In addition, a comparative study conducted in IEEE 802.11-based ad-hoc networks of most existing rate adaptation algorithms.