Efficient wireless link bandwidth detection for IEEE 802.11 networks

In order to provide accurate and real-time bandwidth information and enhance the QoS for bandwidth-sensitive applications in a dynamically changing wireless network, the paper proposes an efficient method for wireless bandwidth detection (WBD) using a packet probing approach on mobile nodes. The novelty and contributions of WBD are three-fold: (1) efficiency - by sending probe packets of various sizes, WBD can determine the wireless link bandwidth with light load and short time duration; (2) accuracy - using different mechanisms to filter out the random time variation, a high detection accuracy can be achieved; (3) stability - our algorithm attains stable results under different cross traffic conditions. Experimental data observed through extensive simulations shows the effectiveness and efficiency of WBD.