The Impact of Link Adaptation on Wifi 802.11N

WiFi networks based on the IEEE 802.11 standard are currently penetrating into our daily life in many ways. With increasing demand for higher data rates by mobile applications, better network performance is required. Since link adaptation algorithms can play a key role in improving performance, they have been extensively investigated in the last decade. However, the relative impact of different approaches has not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of three link adaptation algorithms on WiFi's 802.11n networks in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands. Network performance has been evaluated in terms of network throughput, WLAN delay and medium access delay. Simulation results show that the three link adaptation algorithms have greatly varying improvements on network performance, improvements that are also influenced by which frequency band the network is operating in.