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Predictable 802.11 packet delivery from wireless channel measurements

Published: 30 August 2010 Publication History

Abstract

RSSI is known to be a fickle indicator of whether a wireless link will work, for many reasons. This greatly complicates operation because it requires testing and adaptation to find the best rate, transmit power or other parameter that is tuned to boost performance. We show that, for the first time, wireless packet delivery can be accurately predicted for commodity 802.11 NICs from only the channel measurements that they provide. Our model uses 802.11n Channel State Information measurements as input to an OFDM receiver model we develop by using the concept of effective SNR. It is simple, easy to deploy, broadly useful, and accurate. It makes packet delivery predictions for 802.11a/g SISO rates and 802.11n MIMO rates, plus choices of transmit power and antennas. We report testbed experiments that show narrow transition regions (<2 dB for most links) similar to the near-ideal case of narrowband, frequency-flat channels. Unlike RSSI, this lets us predict the highest rate that will work for a link, trim transmit power, and more. We use trace-driven simulation to show that our rate prediction is as good as the best rate adaptation algorithms for 802.11a/g, even over dynamic channels, and extends this good performance to 802.11n.

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  1. Predictable 802.11 packet delivery from wireless channel measurements

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      SIGCOMM '10: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2010 conference
      August 2010
      500 pages
      ISBN:9781450302012
      DOI:10.1145/1851182
      • cover image ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
        ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review  Volume 40, Issue 4
        SIGCOMM '10
        October 2010
        481 pages
        ISSN:0146-4833
        DOI:10.1145/1851275
        Issue’s Table of Contents
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      Published: 30 August 2010

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      Author Tags

      1. 802.11n
      2. effective snr
      3. fading
      4. link adaptation
      5. mimo
      6. ofdm
      7. power control
      8. rate adaptation
      9. rssi
      10. snr
      11. wireless

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      SIGCOMM '10: ACM SIGCOMM 2010 Conference
      August 30 - September 3, 2010
      New Delhi, India

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