Q-CMRA: Queue-Based Channel-Measurement and Rate-Allocation

In traditional wireless protocols, medium-access-control and physical-layer rate-allocation are performed separately. This paper makes the case for combining the two into a single cross-layer framework. It presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of queue-based channel-measurement and rate-allocation (Q-CMRA) that is based on this single cross-layer framework. Q-CMRA´s distributed algorithms utilize both queue-state and channel-state to jointly control medium-access and rate-allocation. Such joint control is essential to improving spatial-reuse and total network throughput. In our experiments, Q-CMRA outperforms traditional CSMA-CA and doubles the total network throughput in some setups.