An adaptive packet aggregation algorithm for wireless networks

In order to reduce the protocol overhead of WLANs, packet aggregation is permitted in the IEEE 802.11n standard. Packet aggregation can improve the throughput by reducing the protocol overhead, but it can also increase the delay. In any packet aggregation scheme there is a trade-off between maximizing throughput and minimizing delay. In this paper, we propose an adaptive aggregation algorithm called AAM that allows for an adaptive trade-off between maximizing throughput and minimizing delay. Through simulation we demonstrate the superior performance of the AAM algorithm over the FIFO aggregation scheme in terms of the trade-off between the number of sub-packets and the average delay.