TiM: Fine-Grained Rate Adaptation in WLANs

Channel condition varies frequently in wireless networks. To achieve good performance, devices need rate adaptation. In rate adaptation, choosing proper modulation schemes based on channel conditions is vital to the transmission performance. However, due to the natural character of discrete modulation types and continuous varied link conditions, we cannot make a one-to-one mapping from modulation schemes to channel conditions. This matching gap causes either over-select or under-select modulation schemes which limits throughput performance. To fill-in the gap, we propose TiM (Time-line Modulation), a novel 3-Dimensional modulation scheme by adding time dimension into current amplitude-phase domain schemes. With estimation of channel condition, TiM changes base-band data transmission time by artificially interpolating values between original data points without changing amplitude-phase domain modulation type. We implemented TiM on USRP2 and conducted comprehensive simulations. Results show that, compared with rate adaptation choosing from traditional modulation schemes, TiM can improve channel utilization up to 200%.