Wi-Fi Rate Adaptation using a Simple Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

The increasing complexity of recent Wi-Fi amendments is making optimal Rate Adaptation (RA) a challenge. The use of classic algorithms or heuristic models to address RA is becoming unfeasible due to the large combination of configuration parameters along with the variability of the wireless channel. Machine Learning-based solutions have been proposed in the state of art, to deal with this complexity. However, they typically use complex models and their implementation in real scenarios is difficult. We propose a simple Deep Reinforcement Learning approach for the automatic RA in Wi-Fi networks, named Data-driven Algorithm for Rate Adaptation (DARA). DARA is standard-compliant. It dynamically adjusts the Wi-Fi Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) solely based on the observation of the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the received frames at the transmitter. Our simulation results show that DARA achieves up to 15% higher throughput when compared with Minstrel High Throughput (HT) and equals the performance of the Ideal Wi-Fi RA algorithm.