A New Link Adaptation Scheme for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

The IEEE 802.11 WLAN becomes more applied for multimedia traffics that are very strict in terms of link rate and transmission delay performance. In this paper, the authors will study link adaptation requirements to allow the requested multimedia quality-based communications. The efficiency of rate control diagrams is linked to the fast channel variation response. A new dynamic time-based link adaptation mechanism, called MAARF (modified adaptive auto rate fallback), is proposed. Beside the transmission frame results, the new model implements round trip time (RTT) mechanism to choose adequately instantaneous link rate. This proposed model is evaluated with ARF (auto rate fallback) and AARF (adaptive ARF) schemes. Simulation results are given to illustrate the quality improvement of transmission link over Wi-Fi networks.