Comparing the Iwl-Mvm-Rs and Minstrel-HT Rate Adaptation Algorithms Under Different Local Error Conditions

WLAN technology has grown rapidly and now provides increasingly reliable and fast wireless connectivity. A number of Rate Adaptation Algorithms (RAAs) which are designed to select the optimal line rate according to the channel conditions have been proposed. Iwl-Mvm-Rs RAA which is implemented in the Intel wireless chips and Minstrel-HT RAA which is implemented in the Linux kernels are two such well-known algorithms. Many existing papers evaluate these two algorithms with regard to device mobility and signal fading. However, the causes of frame errors can be divided into two categories: weak signal reception and collisions. Therefore, in this paper, we investigated three test scenarios in NS-3 for these two causes of error in order to analyze and compare these two algorithms. We find that the response time for Iwl-Mvm-Rs to find the optimal line rate is shorter than Minstrel-HT RAA. Minstrel-HT RAA always chooses a higher line rate than Iwl-Mvm-Rs, but Iwl-Mvm-Rs performs better in terms of reducing the Frame Error Rate (FER) when weak signal reception is the cause of the error. However, when the cause of the error is a collision, Minstrel-HT RAA performs better because it always chooses a higher line rate since lowering the line rate is not beneficial in this scenario. This approach can also be useful for analyzing the correlation between the line rate and the local channel condition.