Adaptive link quality estimation for wireless ad hoc networks

Abstract

Due to the complexity and time-variation of wireless channel, it is a great challenge to measure and estimate the channel quality accurately in wireless ad hoc network. To address this problem, we propose a link quality estimator which use the packet loss rate (PLR), round trip time (RTT), available bandwidth (ABW) at the sender and the feedback information from receiver to continuously tracks the channel error probability and the collision probability of the receiver by using an Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF). Through experiments we demonstrate that our link estimator can quickly adapt to the temporal dynamics of the links and accurately predict the link quality, which is more accurate than the traditional broadcasting-based method. © 2009 IEEE.