Multi-rate adaptation with interference and congestion awareness

Rate adaptation plays a central role in the efficiency of data transmissions in wireless networks. Due to the complex physical-layer effects of wireless links, including interference, attenuation, and multi-path fading, designing a rate adaptation algorithm that performs well in most scenarios is a challenging problem. We present the Multi-rate Adaptation with Interference and Congestion Awareness (MAICA) scheme, which is compatible with existing 802.11 implementations and relies only on acknowledgment packets for its operation. Extensive simulations, analytical model, and real-world experiments are used to show that MAICA consistently performs better than prior rate adaptation schemes used to date, especially in dense and congested wireless networks.