Exploiting Opportunistic Packet Delivery for Rate Control in 802.11 Wireless Networks

The throughput of the 802.11 protocol, which offers multiple transmission rates, is greatly influenced by the rate control algorithms. However, the high overheads associated with rate adjustment cause traditional rate selection mechanisms to select rates that are non-optimal. In this paper, we explore how packet combining can address this problem. Combining together and broadcasting packets originally destined different receivers exploits multiple opportunities of packet delivery and reduces the risk of poor choices of rates. As a result, our algorithm more aggressively seeks higher transmission rates and can adapt to fast changing channel conditions. Throughput enhancement in simulation indicates that throughput can be boosted by more than 50% on average in Rayleigh fading channels