Evaluation of the antennas performance for three-element MIMO access points in a two-storey house

Abstract

In this paper, the antennas performances for the 5.2 GHz 802.11n network are compared by three different access points with 3 antenna configurations based on the simulated throughput derived from measurements in a two-storey house. The aim here is to outline a methodology for access point performance taking account client orientation, MIMO data streams that can be supported and finally a total throughput metric. In order to demonstrate this, an example of a commercial access point (AP1) is compared with two alternative antenna configurations: an orthogonal array of dipoles (AP2) and a linear array of vertical dipoles (AP3). The measured radiation patterns are presented for all APs and pattern statics show the directionality and polarization mix. Simulated physical layer throughput is computed for all modulation and coding based on the measured spectral responses. Analysis shows the AP2 has the best overall performance with the average throughput of 138 Mbps, on the contrary, AP3 works the worst with the average throughput of 118 Mbps, it also finds that at some harsh locations, AP1 with directional antennas will boost the links to get a better performance that it can get over 29% higher than AP2.