Measurement Study of Dense Networks with Heterogeneous IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi DevicesShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops, ICC Workshops 2021 - Proceedings, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) , 2021Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Wi-Fi devices are being increasingly deployed for both traditional high-throughput and new IoT applications. Thus, highly heterogeneous Wi-Fi devices with different configurations and capabilities will be co-located in dense deployments. However, it is not yet fully understood how such devices share the spectrum among each other and what performance they achieve, especially in dense emerging deployments. This paper presents extensive throughput measurements from a dense indoor IEEE 802.11ac testbed with heterogeneous commercial devices. Some links use high-throughput Asus devices with sophisticated MIMO configurations and others use single-antenna Raspberry Pis (RPis), as simpler IoT devices. Moreover, these links are configured to operate on different co- and adjacent channels of different widths. We show that there is a non-trivial interplay between PHY capabilities and contention at the MAC layer, with unintended consequences. Namely, adjacent channel interference (ACI) causes asymmetric channel contention where only Asus devices defer transmissions, whereas RPis do not, likely due to their different receiver filters. Two major consequences are: (i) in heterogeneous deployments the Asus links often have a throughput that is tens of Mbps lower than that of the RPi links, despite the more sophisticated MIMO capabilities of the Asus devices; and (ii) contention due to ACI among devices operating on narrow channels affects contention also with devices operating on wide overlapping channels and determines whether the latter starve or not. Our results suggest overall that better knowledge of the unintentional effects due to PHY-MAC interactions is needed, in order to explicitly take this into account when designing fair and predictable spectrum sharing mechanisms.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) , 2021.
Keywords [en]
heterogeneous devices, IEEE 802.11ac, measurements, Wi-Fi, Antennas, Cochannel interference, Internet of things, Physical layer, Wireless local area networks (WLAN), Adjacent channel interference, Adjacent channels, Asymmetric channel, Commercial Devices, IOT applications, Measurement study, Throughput measurements, Unintended consequences, IEEE Standards
National Category
Communication Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-311171DOI: 10.1109/ICCWorkshops50388.2021.9473620ISI: 000848412200117Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85112843926OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-311171DiVA, id: diva2:1658730
Conference
2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops, ICC Workshops 2021, 14 June 2021 through 23 June 2021
Note
Part of proceedings: ISBNÂ 978-1-7281-9441-7
QC 20220517
2022-05-172022-05-172023-01-17Bibliographically approved