Interference temperature limits of IEEE 802.11 protocol radio channels

Interference temperature is a measure of how well a radio operating with a particular protocol and modulation scheme can tolerate interference in its spectrum space. We consider this tolerance metric for the IEEE 802.11 protocol for wireless networking. In experiments with off-the-shelf devices in the laboratory, we characterize the tolerance of the protocol to interference at various frequencies and power levels. Using the results of the experiment, we compute the interference temperature limit that the system will tolerate. We find that the interference temperature limit of the devices is much lower than the upper bound predicted by theory. The interference temperature limit of the protocols is not proportional to the data capacity, hence factors in the physical implementation play an important role in the robustness of the channel.