Skip to main content
Log in

A trace-based evaluation of adaptive error correction for a wireless local area network

  • Published:
Mobile Networks and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Wireless transmissions are highly susceptible to noise and interference. As a result, the error characteristics of a wireless link may vary widely depending on environmental factors such as location of the communicating systems and activity of competing radiation sources, making error control a difficult task. In this paper we evaluate error control strategies for a wireless LAN. Based on low-level packet traces of WaveLAN, we first show that forward error correction (FEC) is effective in recovering from bit corruptions and that packet length adjustment can reduce packet truncation. However, as expected, fixed error control policies can perform very poorly, because they either introduce too much overhead in “good” environments or are not aggressive enough in “bad” environments. We address this problem through adaptive error control, i.e., error control policies that adapt the degree of FEC redundancy and the packet size to the environment. The effectiveness of adaptive error control depends on the characteristics of the error environment, e.g., the type of errors and the frequency with which the error environment changes. Our evaluation shows that adaptive error control can improve throughput consistently across a wide range of wireless LAN error environments. The reason for this effectiveness is that changes in the error environment are often caused by human mobility-related events such as the motion of a cordless phone, which take place over seconds, while adaptation protocols can respond in tens of milliseconds. Evaluating adaptive error control in a wireless environments is challenging because repeatable experiments are difficult: the wireless environment cannot easily be isolated and the adaptation process itself changes the environment, which may make trace-based evaluation difficult. We introduce a trace-based evaluation methodology that deals appropriately with changes in packet content and size.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. B. Arazi, A Commonsense Approach to the Theory of Error Correcting Codes (MIT Press, 1988).

  2. Data Manual – WaveLAN Air Interface, No. 407-0024785, Rev. 2, AT&T Wireless Communications and Networking Division, AT&T Corporation (July, 1995).

  3. B.R. Badrinath, A. Bakre, T. Imielinski and R. Marantz, Handling mobile clients: A case for indirect interaction, in: Proc. of IEEE WWOS-IV, Napa, CA, IEEE Press (1993) pp. 91–97.

    Google Scholar 

  4. A. Bakre and B.R. Badrinath, I-TCP: Indirect TCP for mobile hosts, in: Proc. of the 15th Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (1995) pp. 136–143.

  5. A. Bakre and B. Badrinath, Implementation and performance evaluation of indirect TCP, IEEE Trans. on Computers 46 (1997).

  6. H. Balakrishnan, V.N. Padmanabhan, S. Seshan and R.H. Katz, A comparison of mechanics for improving TCP performance over wireless links, IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking (December 1997).

  7. H. Balakrishnan, V.N. Padmanabhan, S. Seshan, M. Stemm, E. Amir and R.H. Katz, TCP improvements for heterogeneous networks: The Daedalus approach, in: Proc. of the 35th Annual Allerton Conf. on Communication, Control, and Computing (1997).

  8. A. DeSimone, M.C. Chuah and O.-C. Yue, Throughput performance of transport-layer protocols over wireless LANs, in: Proc. of IEEE GLOBECOM '93 (1993) pp. 542–549.

  9. D. Duchamp and A. Athan, Agent-mediated message passing for constrained environments, in: Proc. of the USENIX Mobile and Location-Independent Computing Symposium, USENIX Association (1993) pp. 103-107.

  10. D. Duchamp and N.F. Reynolds, Measured performance of a wireless LAN, in: Proc. of the 17th Conf. on Local Computer Networks, IEEE (1992) pp. 494–499.

  11. D. Eckhardt and P. Steenkiste, Measurement and analysis of the error characteristics of an in building wireless network, in: Proc. of the SIGCOMM '96 Symposium on Communications Architectures and Protocols, Stanford, ACM (1996) pp. 243–254.

    Google Scholar 

  12. J. Escobar, Run-away dynamics of CDMA channels in an adaptive packet radio network, Wireless Networks 1 (1995) 37–46.

    Google Scholar 

  13. J. Jubin and J.D. Tornow, The DARPA packet radio network protocols, in: Proc. of the IEEE (January 1987) pp. 21–32.

  14. S. Kallel, Efficient hybrid ARQ protocols with adaptive forward error correction, IEEE Trans. on Communications 42 (1994) 281–289.

    Google Scholar 

  15. P. Karn, Error Control Coding (September 1996), http://people. qualcomm.com/karn/dsp.html.

  16. P. Karn, The Qualcomm CDMA digital cellular system, in: Proc. of the USENIX Mobile and Location-Independent Computing Symposium, USENIX Association (1993) pp. 35–39.

  17. S. Lin and D.J. Costello, Error Control Coding: Fundamentals and Applications (Prentice Hall, 1983).

  18. G.T. Nguyen, R.H. Katz, B. Noble and M. Satyanarayanan, A tracebased approach for modelling wireless channel behavior, in: Proc. of the Winter Simulation Conf. (1996).

  19. B. Noble, G. Nguyen, M. Satyanarayanan and R. Katz, Mobile network tracing, Internet RFC 2041 (September 1996).

  20. B.D. Noble, M. Satyanarayanan, G. Nguyen and R.H. Katz, Tracebased mobile network emulation, in: Proc. of the ACM SIGCOMM Conf., Cannes, France (1997).

  21. J.P. Odenwalder, Error Control Coding Handbook, Final Report (LINKABIT, San Diego, CA, July 1976).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Q1650 k = 7 Multi-Code Rate Viterbi Decoder technical data sheet, Qualcomm, Inc., 6455 Lusk Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92121-2779 (1992).

  23. Proposed EIA/TIA Interim Standard: Wideband Spread Spectrum Digital Cellular System–Dual-Mode Mobile Station–Base Station Compatibility Standard, No. 80-7814, Rev DCR 03567, Qualcomm Inc., San Diego, California (April 1992), accepted as TIA IS-95.

  24. K. Raith, E. Lissakers, J. Uddenfeldt and J. Swerup, Cellular for personal communications, in: Wireless Personal Communications (Kluwer, 1993) pp. 1–20.

  25. RangeLAN2 Tech. Guide, available at http://www.proxim.com/ support/techtips/techgd.shtml.

  26. T. Rappaport, Characterization of UHF multipath radio channels in factory buildings, IEEE Trans. on Antennas and Propagation (August 1989) 1058–1069.

  27. T.S. Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice (Prentice Hall, 1996).

  28. F.A. Tobagi, R. Binder and B. Leiner, Packet radio and satellite networks, IEEE Communications (November 1984) 24–40.

  29. B. Tuch, Development of WaveLAN, an ISM band wireless LAN, AT&T Technical J. (July/August 1993) 27–37.

  30. A.J. Viterbi, Spread spectrum communications – myths and realities, IEEE Communications Magazine 17 (1979) 11–18.

    Google Scholar 

  31. A.J. Viterbi and J.K. Omura, Principles of Digital Communication and Coding (McGraw-Hill, 1979).

  32. R. Yavatkar and N. Bhagawat, Improving end-to-end performance of TCP over mobile internetworks, in: Mobile '94 Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (1994).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Eckhardt, D.A., Steenkiste, P. A trace-based evaluation of adaptive error correction for a wireless local area network. Mobile Networks and Applications 4, 273–287 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019163202314

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019163202314

Keywords

Navigation