{"id":158334,"date":"2009-08-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/opportunistic-use-of-client-repeaters-to-improve-performance-of-wlans-3\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T21:09:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T04:09:44","slug":"opportunistic-use-of-client-repeaters-to-improve-performance-of-wlans-3","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/opportunistic-use-of-client-repeaters-to-improve-performance-of-wlans-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunistic Use of Client Repeaters to Improve Performance of WLANs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Currently deployed IEEE 802.11WLANs (Wi-Fi networks) share access point (AP) bandwidth on a per-packet basis. However, the various stations communicating with the AP often have different signal qualities, resulting in different transmission rates. This induces a phenomenon known as the rate anomaly problem, in which stations with lower signal quality transmit at lower rates and consume a significant majority of airtime, thereby dramatically reducing the throughput of stations transmitting at high rates.<\/p>\n<p>We propose a practical, deployable system, called SoftRepeater, in which stations cooperatively address the rate anomaly problem. Specifically, higher-rate Wi-Fi stations opportunistically transform themselves into repeaters for stations with low data-rates when transmitting to\/from the AP. The key challenge is to determine when it is beneficial to enable the repeater functionality. In this paper, we propose an initiation protocol that ensures that repeater functionality is enabled only when appropriate. Also, our system can run directly on top of today\u2019s 802.11 infrastructure networks. We evaluate our system using simulation and testbed implementation, and find that SoftRepeater can improve cumulative throughput by up to 200%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Currently deployed IEEE 802.11WLANs (Wi-Fi networks) share access point (AP) bandwidth on a per-packet basis. However, the various stations communicating with the AP often have different signal qualities, resulting in different transmission rates. This induces a phenomenon known as the rate anomaly problem, in which stations with lower signal quality transmit at lower rates and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13547],"msr-publication-type":[193715],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-158334","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-systems-and-networking","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"Volume 17, Number 4, pp. 1160-1171, IEEE\/ACM Transaction on Networking","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2009-08-01","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"IEEE\/ACM Transaction on Networking","msr_volume":"17","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"4","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"Currently deployed IEEE 802.11WLANs (Wi-Fi networks) share access point (AP) bandwidth on a per-packet basis. However, the various stations communicating with the AP often have different signal qualities, resulting in different transmission rates. This induces a phenomenon known as the rate anomaly problem, in which stations with lower signal quality transmit at lower rates and consume a significant majority of airtime, thereby dramatically reducing the throughput of stations transmitting at high rates. We propose a practical, deployable system, called SoftRepeater, in which stations cooperatively address the rate anomaly problem. Specifically, higher-rate Wi-Fi stations opportunistically transform themselves into repeaters for stations with low data-rates when transmitting to\/from the AP. The key challenge is to determine when it is beneficial to enable the repeater functionality. In this paper, we propose an initiation protocol that ensures that repeater functionality is enabled only when appropriate. Also, our system can run directly on top of today\u2019s 802.11 infrastructure networks. We evaluate our system using simulation and testbed implementation, and find that SoftRepeater can improve cumulative throughput by up to 200%.","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"207577","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"softrepeater-ton.pdf","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/softrepeater-ton.pdf","id":207577,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":207577,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/softrepeater-ton.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"bahl","user_id":31167,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=bahl"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"ranveer","user_id":33344,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=ranveer"},{"type":"text","value":"Patrick Lee","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Vishal Mishra","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"padhye","user_id":33179,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=padhye"},{"type":"text","value":"Dan Rubenstein","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"yanyu","user_id":34974,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=yanyu"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[144899],"msr_project":[170162,169800],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"article","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":170162,"post_title":"VirtualWiFi","post_name":"virtualwifi","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2008-12-22 15:27:08","post_modified":"2020-03-13 08:33:23","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/virtualwifi\/","post_excerpt":"VirtualWiFi (previously known as MultiNet) is a virtualization architecture for wireless LAN (WLAN) cards.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170162"}]}},{"ID":169800,"post_title":"Self Organizing Wireless Mesh Networks","post_name":"self-organizing-wireless-mesh-networks","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2004-10-12 13:35:08","post_modified":"2017-06-16 10:44:18","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/self-organizing-wireless-mesh-networks\/","post_excerpt":"Community-based multi-hop wireless networks is disruptive to the current broadband Internet access paradigm, which relies on cable and DSL being deployed in individual homes. It is important because it allows free flow of information without any moderation or selective rate control. Compared to the large DSL and cable modem systems that are centrally managed, mesh networking is organic \u2014 everyone in the neighborhood contributes network resources and cooperates. 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