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Evaluation of IEEE 802.11 coexistence in WLAN deployments

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Abstract

Wi-Fi has become a successful technology since the publication of its first WLAN standard due to continuous advances and updates while remaining always backwards compatible. Backwards compatibility among subsequent standards is an important feature in order to take advantage of previous equipment when publishing a new amendment. At present, IEEE 802.11b support is still mandatory to obtain the Wi-Fi certification. However, there are several harmful effects of allowing old legacy IEEE 802.11b transmissions in modern WLAN deployments. Lower throughput per device is obtained at slow rates, but also the effect known as performance anomaly, which nearly leads to starvation of fast stations, has to be taken into account. Finally, backwards compatibility mechanisms pose an important penalty in throughput performance for newer specifications. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the current state of IEEE 802.11, comparing coverage range and throughput performance among subsequent amendments, and focusing on the drawbacks and benefits of including protection mechanisms.

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Notes

  1. In all cases, we assume 20 dBm of transmitted power and isotropic antennas.

  2. Negative values for penalty in the figure mean an improvement with respect to original IEEE 802.11g performance.

  3. L-SIG TXOP is used instead of HT Mixed mode when frame aggregation is being employed.

  4. RTS and CTS frames are transmitted at 6 Mbps, i.e. IEEE 802.11g and IEEE 802.11a minimum basic rate.

  5. RTS and CTS frames are transmitted at IEEE 802.11b minimum basic rate of 1 Mbps.

  6. Again, the negative values for penalty in the figures reveal the improvement with respect to original IEEE 802.11n.

  7. ~12,000 APs were detected in different measurement campaigns in urban, commercial and residential areas in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands throughout the city of Barcelona and surrounding areas at different hours. A laptop equipped with an IEEE 802.11n USB dual-band (Alfa Network UBDo-a) card and an external omnidirectional antenna (Air Live WAE-5AG) were employed in order to capture management frames (Beacon, Probe Request and Response). A later analysis of the captured frames led to the results exposed.

  8. Results in Figs. 9 and 10 have been obtained following the methodology described in [23].

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported in part by the ERDF and the Spanish Government through project TEC2016-79988-P, AEI/FEDER, UE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech, Barcelona, Spain

    Elena Lopez-Aguilera, Eduard Garcia-Villegas & Jordi Casademont

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  1. Elena Lopez-Aguilera
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  2. Eduard Garcia-Villegas
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  3. Jordi Casademont
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Correspondence to Elena Lopez-Aguilera.

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Lopez-Aguilera, E., Garcia-Villegas, E. & Casademont, J. Evaluation of IEEE 802.11 coexistence in WLAN deployments. Wireless Netw 25, 87–104 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-017-1540-z

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