RATE ADAPTIVE PROTOCOL FOR MULTIRATE IEEE 802.11 NETWORKS

In this paper, a rate adaptive protocol AMARF (Adaptive Multirate Auto Rate Fallback) for multirate IEEE 802.11 networks is proposed. In AMARF, each data rate is assigned a unique success threshold, which is a criterion to judge when to switch a rate to the next higher one, and the success thresholds can be adjusted dynamically in an adaptive manner according to the running conditions, such as packet length and channel parameters. Moreover, the proposed protocol can be implemented by software without any change to the current IEEE 802.11 standards. Simulation result shows that AMARF yields significantly higher throughput than other existing schemes including ARF and its variants, in various running conditions.