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Understanding the effect of access point density on wireless LAN performance

Published: 09 September 2007 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we present a systematic experimental study of the effect of inter-cell interference on IEEE 802.11 performance. With increasing penetration of WiFi into residential areas and usage in ad hoc conference settings, chaotic unplanned deployments are becoming the norm rather than an exception. These networks often operate many nearby access points and stations on the same channel, either due to lack of coordination or insufficient available channels. Thus, inter-cell interference is common but not well-understood. According to conventional wisdom, the efficiency of an 802.11 network is determined by the number of active clients. Surprisingly, we find that with a typical TCP-dominant workload, cumulative system throughput is characterized by the number of interfering access points rather than the number of clients. We find that due to TCP flow control, the number of backlogged stations in such a network equals twice the number of access points. Thus, a single access point network proved very robust even with over one hundred clients. Multiple interfering access points, however, lead to an increase in collisions that reduces throughput and affects volume of traffic in the network.

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        MobiCom '07: Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international conference on Mobile computing and networking
        September 2007
        370 pages
        ISBN:9781595936813
        DOI:10.1145/1287853
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        Published: 09 September 2007

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        Author Tags

        1. high-density WLANs
        2. intercell interference
        3. real-world evaluation
        4. wireless testbeds

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        • (2020)Coordinated Spectrum Sharing Framework for beyond 5G Cellular Networks2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)10.1109/GLOBECOM38437.2019.9013775(1-6)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2020
        • (2019)Coordinated Dynamic Spectrum Sharing for 5G and Beyond Cellular NetworksIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29343857(111592-111604)Online publication date: 2019
        • (2018)Resource Allocation and Multisession Routing Algorithms in Coordinated Multipoint Wireless Communication NetworksIEEE Systems Journal10.1109/JSYST.2017.268710212:3(2226-2237)Online publication date: Sep-2018
        • (2017)Mobility management in IEEE 802.11 WLAN using SDN/NFV technologiesEURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking10.1186/s13638-017-0856-92017:1Online publication date: 13-Apr-2017
        • (2017)Measurement study of IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi performance in high density indoor deployments: Are wider channels always better?2017 IEEE 18th International Symposium on A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM)10.1109/WoWMoM.2017.7974287(1-9)Online publication date: Jun-2017
        • (2017)Mobility Management in AP Using SDN-NFV TechnologiesCommunications, Signal Processing, and Systems10.1007/978-981-10-3229-5_1(3-12)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2017
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        • (2016)AMONET: A method for detecting and mitigating the data rate degradation due to interference over wireless networks2016 IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking) and Workshops10.1109/IFIPNetworking.2016.7497202(207-215)Online publication date: May-2016
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