Fragment adaptive reduction: coping with various interferers in radio unlicensed bands

This paper studies the impact of common interferers found in unlicensed bands on 802.11 and other CSMA systems. First, we describe those interferers and the MAC techniques used to combat them. Then, we present fragment adaptive reduction, a scheme to overcome the effect of non-CSMA repetitive interferers, and it's implementation in the SWAP protocol. We also describe a simple model of domestic microwave oven interference. We finish by some exhaustive simulations of the impact of microwave oven and other interferers on 802.11, which illustrate the benefits of the fragment reduction scheme.