WLAN Data Rates Achievable from Roads in Low and High Mobility Environments

Research on using WLAN from vehicles has been ongoing for quite a while now. Exploiting already available WLAN APs from fast moving vehicles is a challenging and interesting area of research. In this paper, we measure the data rates achievable in a typical drive thru set up. One reason of preferring WLANs over Cellular systems for getting broadband connectivity is that the former promise much higher data rates. This claim, however, is based on WLANs indoor performance. In this paper, we investigate whether sufficiently high data rates are available even when WLANs are used in rapidly changing high and low mobility environments from vehicles on roads. Experiments are conducted for three different NICs to see if the achievable data rates vary with interface cards. Conclusions reached in this work are based on actual experimentation and the obtained results reflect the actual performance of WLANs in vehicular scenarios. Obtained results are verified with statistical tests.