IEEE 802.11b WLAN capacity and performance measurements in channel with large delay spreads

IEEE 802.11x wireless local area network (WLAN) systems are quite popular in office indoor environment and urban outdoor environments but suburban or rural environments can still offer unexploited possibilities, especially for military communication purposes. The radio channels of these environments have large delay spreads that pose limitations for IEEE 802.11b signal usage. In this study IEEE 802.11b WLAN capacity and performance is evaluated based on measurements of two different commercial vendors´ WLAN products. Throughput and packet error ratio is studied as a function of excess delay. The radio channels are simulated using a radio channel simulator. We find that IEEE 802.11b WLAN systems´ capacity and performance decrease as excess delay increases, and the systems cannot efficiently operate in channels where the excess delays are larger than symbol duration.