mac80211: minstrel_ht: replace rate stats ewma with a better moving average

Rate success probability usually fluctuates a lot under normal conditions.
With a simple EWMA, noise and fluctuation can be reduced by increasing the
window length, but that comes at the cost of introducing lag on sudden
changes.

This change replaces the EWMA implementation with a moving average that's
designed to significantly reduce lag while keeping a bigger window size
by being better at filtering out noise.

It is only slightly more expensive than the simple EWMA and still avoids
divisions in its calculation.

The algorithm is adapted from an implementation intended for a completely
different field (stock market trading), where the tradeoff of lag vs
noise filtering is equally important. It is based on the "smoothing filter"
from http://www.stockspotter.com/files/PredictiveIndicators.pdf.

I have adapted it to fixed-point math with some constants so that it uses
only addition, bit shifts and multiplication

To better make use of the filtering and bigger window size, the update
interval time is cut in half.

For testing, the algorithm can be reverted to the older one via debugfs

Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd@nbd.name>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20191008171139.96476-2-nbd@nbd.name
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c
index 21c74b200269..96c81392e617 100644
--- a/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c
+++ b/net/mac80211/rc80211_minstrel_ht.c
@@ -737,7 +737,7 @@ minstrel_ht_update_stats(struct minstrel_priv *mp, struct minstrel_ht_sta *mi,
 
 			mrs = &mg->rates[i];
 			mrs->retry_updated = false;
-			minstrel_calc_rate_stats(mrs);
+			minstrel_calc_rate_stats(mp, mrs);
 			cur_prob = mrs->prob_ewma;
 
 			if (minstrel_ht_get_tp_avg(mi, group, i, cur_prob) == 0)
@@ -773,6 +773,8 @@ minstrel_ht_update_stats(struct minstrel_priv *mp, struct minstrel_ht_sta *mi,
 
 	/* try to sample all available rates during each interval */
 	mi->sample_count *= 8;
+	if (mp->new_avg)
+		mi->sample_count /= 2;
 
 	if (sample)
 		minstrel_ht_rate_sample_switch(mp, mi);
@@ -889,6 +891,7 @@ minstrel_ht_tx_status(void *priv, struct ieee80211_supported_band *sband,
 	struct ieee80211_tx_rate *ar = info->status.rates;
 	struct minstrel_rate_stats *rate, *rate2, *rate_sample = NULL;
 	struct minstrel_priv *mp = priv;
+	u32 update_interval = mp->update_interval / 2;
 	bool last, update = false;
 	bool sample_status = false;
 	int i;
@@ -943,6 +946,10 @@ minstrel_ht_tx_status(void *priv, struct ieee80211_supported_band *sband,
 
 	switch (mi->sample_mode) {
 	case MINSTREL_SAMPLE_IDLE:
+		if (mp->new_avg &&
+		    (mp->hw->max_rates > 1 ||
+		     mi->total_packets_cur < SAMPLE_SWITCH_THR))
+			update_interval /= 2;
 		break;
 
 	case MINSTREL_SAMPLE_ACTIVE:
@@ -983,8 +990,7 @@ minstrel_ht_tx_status(void *priv, struct ieee80211_supported_band *sband,
 		}
 	}
 
-	if (time_after(jiffies, mi->last_stats_update +
-				mp->update_interval / 2)) {
+	if (time_after(jiffies, mi->last_stats_update + update_interval)) {
 		update = true;
 		minstrel_ht_update_stats(mp, mi, true);
 	}
@@ -1665,6 +1671,7 @@ minstrel_ht_alloc(struct ieee80211_hw *hw, struct dentry *debugfsdir)
 
 	mp->hw = hw;
 	mp->update_interval = HZ / 10;
+	mp->new_avg = true;
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_MAC80211_DEBUGFS
 	mp->fixed_rate_idx = (u32) -1;
@@ -1672,6 +1679,8 @@ minstrel_ht_alloc(struct ieee80211_hw *hw, struct dentry *debugfsdir)
 			   &mp->fixed_rate_idx);
 	debugfs_create_u32("sample_switch", S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR, debugfsdir,
 			   &mp->sample_switch);
+	debugfs_create_bool("new_avg", S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR, debugfsdir,
+			   &mp->new_avg);
 #endif
 
 	minstrel_ht_init_cck_rates(mp);