Dynamic data compression in wireless networks

Techniques for saving bandwidth are very important in bandwidth constrained wireless networks. One of the key concepts that save bandwidth is compression of data packets. While it has been employed over low bandwidth point-to-point wired or wireless links, multiuser communication networks such as WLANs and WMNs do not use packet compression. In this work, we designed and implemented the data packet compression mechanism for IEEE 802.11 networks and study its impact on the compression efficiency and throughput. We observed that with 1450Byte sized packets, a compression ratio of 57% is achieved with a throughput degradation of less than 10%. Further, we also propose a dynamic packet compression mechanism where the data packet compression is employed selectively. Results from a prototype implementation are presented.