Patent 7826521 was granted and assigned to Atheros Communications on November, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Rate adaptation is accurately provided by using an average SNR technique, a predicted PER technique, or an EVM to PER mapping technique. An average SNR is computed by averaging EVM values in a particular domain. Using the computed average SNR, an optimized rate is determined. The predicted PER technique includes computing EVM values for a current packet, determining an average BER using these EVM values for each data rate, determining an average SNR from this average BER, using the average SNR and a PER versus SNR curve to determine the predicted PER for each data rate, and using a data rate and the predicted PER to compute the predicted throughput for that data rate. In the last technique, an EVM is mapped to a packet error rate (PER) for each data rate. A throughput is computed for each data rate and PER. A data rate with a high throughput is selected.