UCLA

Rate adaptation (RA) has been used to achieve high goodput. This thesis explores to use RA for energy efficiency in 802.11n MIMO NICs. It is shown that current MIMO RA algorithms are not energy efficient for NICs despite ensuring high throughput. The fundamental problem is that, the high-throughput setting is not equivalent to the energy-efficient one. Marginal throughput gain may be realized at high energy cost. The thesis proposes EERA, an energy-efficient RA solution that trades off goodput for energy savings at NICs. Its experiments have confirmed its energy savings at NICs while keeping the cost across clients acceptable.