Experimental Evaluation and Characterization of Long-Distance 802.11g Links

The use of 802.11 long-distance links is a cost-effective means of providing wireless connectivity to rural areas. Although deployments in such settings are increasing, there are few empirical results reported on the performance of 802.11 over long distances. An empirical evaluation of 802.11 performance over long distances is a non-trivial task since it involves several variables such as the network topology, tower heights, antenna types used and their orientations, and radio transmit powers. The task is further complicated by the presence of network performance constraints, and the inter-dependence among the variables. In this paper we present an empirical performance study of long-distance 802.11g links using metrics such as signal strength, free space loss, jitter and round-trip time. In addition, we also develop a theoretical model of the wireless link to validate our experimental measurements.