Energy efficiency aware dynamic rate and power adaptation in carrier sensing based WLANs under Rayleigh fading and shadowing

We consider the problem of energy efficiency aware dynamic adaptation of data transmission rate and transmission power of the users in carrier sensing based Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) in the presence of path loss, Rayleigh fading and log-normal shadowing. For a data packet transmission, we formulate an optimization problem, solve the problem, and propose a rate and transmission power adaptation scheme with a restriction methodology of data packet transmission for achieving the optimal energy efficiency. In the restriction methodology of data packet transmission, a user does not transmit a data packet if the instantaneous channel gain of the user is lower than a threshold. To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, we develop analytical models for computing the throughput and energy efficiency of WLANs under the proposed scheme considering a saturation traffic condition. We then validate the analytical models via simulation. We find that the proposed scheme provides better throughput and energy efficiency with acceptable throughput fairness if the restriction methodology of data packet transmission is included. By means of the analytical models and simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides significantly higher throughput, energy efficiency and fairness index than a traditional non-adaptive scheme and an existing most relevant adaptive scheme. Throughput and energy efficiency gains obtained by the proposed scheme with respect to the existing adapting scheme are about 75% and 103%, respectively, for a fairness index of 0.8. We also study the effect of various system parameters on throughput and energy efficiency and provide various engineering insights.