The University of British Columbia

Channel conditions in wireless local area networks (WLANs) are variable due to mobility and interference. Autorate algorithms are commonly used in WLANs to maximize the data rate over the variable physical channel. However, the widely used automatic rate fallback (ARF) algorithm does not work properly in the presence of multiaccess collisions due to its inability to differentiate frame losses caused by link errors from those caused by collisions. This paper proposes an improved ARF algorithm that is capable of differentiating between these two types of losses with minimal modifications to the existing medium access control protocol. The performance evaluations show substantial throughput improvements over ARF and other existing algorithms.