Multihop IEEE 802.11b WLAN Performance for VoIP

This paper evaluates the performance of IEEE 802.11b WLAN for supporting multihop voice over IP (VoIP) service. Evaluation is carried out using the NS-2 network simulator and the mean opinion score (MOS) as a criteria for measuring the quality of a VoIP connection. The results show that the mean number of hops between a VoIP transmitter and receiver has the main effect on the number of calls with acceptable quality. On a small network where connections cause interference to each other already three hops cause problems. The mean number of hops can be decreased with a supporting access point (AP) infrastructure. Also the type of interfering traffic affects. The voice quality in VoIP is sensitive to transmission losses, and VoIP cannot compete equally with high data rate applications