REAL-TIME RETRY LIMIT-A SYSTEM AND METHOD TO MAXIMIZE THROUGHPUT AND MINIMIZE PACKET LOSS OF WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORKS

摘要

This invention provides a system and method to dynamically adapt a wireless link retry limit in real-time according to channel conditions and workload intensity in order to maximize MAC throughput and minimize packet loss. In wireless local area networks (WLANs), such as IEEE 802.11b or a, packets can get lost due to either link error or interface queue overflow. Retry is deployed by a wireless link as a link error protection mechanism to reduce packet loss due to link error. However, an improper configuration of this retry limit (such as too high) may cause more packet loss due to queue overflow than link error. The retry-limit adaptation system and method of this invention strikes a balance between queue drops and link losses. Consequently, it achieves much better network performance in terms of a significant reduction of overall packet loss when compared with situations where the retry limit is statically configured, as recommended by the current standard. For video applications, this dynamic adaptation can be configured in such a way that the video quality for a particular network condition is optimized.