Coherence Time Estimation for Performance Improvement of IEEE 802.11n Link Adaptation

IEEE 802.11n standard provides a framework for new link adaptation. A station can request that another station provide a Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) feedback, to fully exploit channel variations on a link. However, if the time elapsed between MCS feedback request and the data frame transmission using the MCS feedback becomes bigger, the previously received feedback information may be obsolete. In that case, the effectiveness of the feedback-based link adaptation is compromised. If a station can estimate how fast the channel quality to the target station changes, it can improve accuracy of the link adaptation. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, through a thorough NS-2 simulation, we show how the coherence time affects the performance of the MCS feedback based link adaptation of 802.11n networks. Second, this paper proposes an effective algorithm for coherence time estimation. Using Allan variance information statistic, a station estimates the coherence time of the receiving link. A proposed link adaptation scheme considering the coherence time can provide better performance.