Wi-Fi Rate Adaptation for Moving Equipment in Industrial Environments

2025-09-09

IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation

AI Summary

Wi-Fi rate adaptation algorithms struggle to simultaneously achieve low latency and high reliability in industrial mobile scenarios (e.g., autonomous robots, exoskeletons). Method: This paper presents the first systematic empirical evaluation of the widely adopted open-source Minstrel algorithm under both static and dynamic industrial conditions, analyzing key reliability metrics—including end-to-end transmission latency and packet loss rate—through real-world measurements. Contribution/Results: Results reveal fundamental limitations of Minstrel in mobile settings, including delayed adaptation responses and frequent misjudgments as device mobility increases. The study demonstrates that Minstrel’s design inherently fails to satisfy the stringent deterministic communication requirements of industrial applications, exposing structural inadequacies in dynamic environments. These findings provide critical empirical evidence and design guidelines for developing next-generation rate adaptation mechanisms—specifically, centralized, digital-twin-enabled frameworks capable of predictive control and optimization.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Sampling/Simulation-based Search
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Stochastic Optimization

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web measurements

Abstract

Wi-Fi is currently considered one of the most promising solutions for interconnecting mobile equipment (e.g., autonomous mobile robots and active exoskeletons) in industrial environments. However, relability requirements imposed by the industrial context, such as ensuring bounded transmission latency, are a major challenge for over-the-air communication. One of the aspects of Wi-Fi technology that greatly affects the probability of a packet reaching its destination is the selection of the appropriate transmission rate. Rate adaptation algorithms are in charge of this operation, but their design and implementation are not regulated by the IEEE 802.11 standard. One of the most popular solutions, available as open source, is Minstrel, which is the default choice for the Linux Kernel.In this paper, Minstrel performance is evaluated for both static and mobility scenarios. Our analysis focuses on metrics of interest for industrial contexts, i.e., latency and packet loss ratio, and serves as a preliminary evaluation for the future development of enhanced rate adaptation algorithms based on centralized digital twins.

Problem

• Optimizing Wi-Fi rate adaptation for mobile industrial equipment
• Evaluating Minstrel's performance in static and mobility scenarios
• Focusing on latency and packet loss for industrial reliability

Innovation

• Evaluating Minstrel Wi-Fi rate adaptation algorithm
• Focusing on latency and packet loss metrics
• Preliminary step for centralized digital twin algorithms