Patent ID: 7957286

Claim:
A method for estimating an optimized transmission bit rate according to a status of a data transmission bit rate in a wireless local area network (LAN) system, the method comprising the steps of: a) determining, by a terminal that transmits data in the wireless local network (LAN) system, whether to change a current data transmission bit rate in a wireless LAN network in consideration of the status of the network's channel according to the status of the transmission bit rate; and b) estimating an optimized transmission bit rate on the basis of results of the determination in step a), and changing the current data transmission bit rate into the estimated transmission bit rate upon transmission of data, by the terminal, wherein if the status of the data transmission bit rate is a composite transmission bit rate, step a) comprises the steps of: a-1) calculating a first block throughput U* for the current data transmission bit rate and a second block throughput U+ for a data transmission bit rate that is one level higher than the current data transmission bit rate, using pre-set conditions, as data blocks are transmitted in the wireless LAN network; a-2) comparing the first block throughput U* with the second block throughput U+, and increasing a data transmission success count by one if the first block throughput U* is lower than the second block throughput U+; and a-3) comparing the data transmission success count increased by one in step a-2) with a pre-set success threshold count S th , and changing the current data transmission bit rate if the data transmission success count increased by one is larger than the pre-set success threshold count S th , wherein if the current data transmission bit rate is changed in step a-3), the optimized transmission bit rate in step b) is a value that is one level higher than the current data transmission bit rate, wherein the pre-set conditions are: U((r i ,r j ),(p s i ,p s j ))=(p s i k i +p s j k j )/T b (r i ,r j ), where r i denotes the bit rate of a transmission bit rate i, r j denotes the bit rate of a transmission bit rate j, p s i denotes transmission success probability of a data frame transmitted at the transmission bit rate i, p s j denotes transmission success probability of a data frame transmitted at the transmission bit rate j, k i denotes the total number of bytes of payload data transmitted at the transmission bit rate i in a block, k j denotes the total number of bytes of payload data transmitted at the transmission bit rate j in the block, and T b (r i ,r j ) denotes time needed for block transmission and block acknowledgement therefor.