GOALI: Maximizing Available Bandwidth in Next Generation WLANs

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

IEEE 802.11 is an evolving standard used throughout the Internet. Recent advances in wireless communication have been incorporated into IEEE 802.11-based standards. IEEE 802.11n and 802.11ac, for example, offer new mechanisms that enable a multifold increase in transmission speeds relative to 802.11a/b/g. Newly available features make configuring a network, and the devices which use it, a critical challenge. The performance of even the most sophisticated networks suffer debilitating degradation if the network is improperly configured. This project is focused on the following questions: 1) What gains can be achieved by closed-loop 802.11n/ac rate adaptation solutions? 2) How can IEEE 802.11 features better be utilized in a rate adaptation solution? 3) How responsive and adaptive should a real-time channel monitoring solution be? and 4) How can the cost of expensive Channel State Information be minimized? By designing new network configuration mechanisms and observing the performance of these mechanisms in a wide variety of real-world deployment scenarios, wireless network performance and robustness are being improved. As the scale of wireless network deployments grows, the need for effective network configuration mechanisms is critical. The work in this project is developing highly flexible protocol enhancements that are adding significant new performance and robustness capabilities to wireless networks running the newest IEEE 802.11 standards. Through scientific publications, conference presentations, and industrial collaborations, the outcomes of this project will be made available to wireless equipment vendors, thereby achieving tangible improvements in Internet performance.