WLC34-4: Improving the Throughput of 802.11 Networks Using Adaptive IP Encapsulation

This paper presents an adaptive encapsulation scheme that significantly improves the effective throughput in 802.11 networks by maximizing the number of IP packets that are encapsulated in a single MAC frame. Encapsulation efficiency is improved by deferring transmissions based on the estimation of packet inter-arrival times and by performing early discarding of packets for which delay violations are anticipated. The scheme supports both real-time and non-real-time traffic types. Simulations indicate that the proposed adaptive encapsulation approach achieves significant throughput improvement over the classic encapsulation approach.