A Method to Improve Adaptability of the Minstrel MAC Rate Control Algorithm

摘要

The MAC (Media Access Control) layer protocol in wireless networks dynamically changes its transmission rate to adapt transmission to channel conditions. Such dynamic adaptations can improve per-hop performance in wireless networks and therefore increase the network throughput. One of the best and commonly used rate control algorithms is Minstrel implemented in the MadWifi driver in Linux. In this paper we present a comprehensive evaluation of the Minstrel rate control adaptation. We show that network throughput could be further improved if the freshness level of throughput measurements currently used in Minstrel was dynamically adapted to channel conditions. This evaluation of the impact of measurement freshness on transmission rate adaptation was carried out in our platform for controllable and repeatable experiments.