Empirical KPIs for interfered WLAN

Abstract

The demand for fast, reliable and cost effective data transmission in home environments is ever increasing. Every new WLAN standard offers a higher data rate and better performance, at the cost of being more prone to interference. Interference mitigation techniques are not fully addressed in standard and leave room for improvement. Cross-technology interferers in ISM bands, such as microwave oven and video streaming, have a significant effect on the performance of these networks. In this paper, we investigate the impact of these interferers on 802.11n networks in a crowded 2.4 GHz band. We propose a repeatable test setup for conducting measurements with real-world interference sources. In order to allow for a comparison between WLAN devices, we propose a KPI-based performance assessment which is beneficial to evaluate the device under test.