Practical Power and Rate Control for WiFi

While there has been extensive theoretical work on sophisticated joint resource allocation algorithms for wireless networks, their applicability to WiFi (IEEE 802.11) networks is very limited. One of the main reasons is the limitations in changing MAC parameters in current driver implementations. To this end, in this work, we developed a general cross-layer communication interface in the Linux kernel between the IEEE 802.11 PHY and MAC to enable per packet TPC. Based on this implementation, we realize an decentralized rate-power controller (Minstrel-Piano). Our initial evaluation shows that Minstrel-Piano is able to significantly decrease the power levels while maintaining the same link performance. These results are encouraging for a better interference management and consequently, better resource allocation in WiFi networks.