IEEE 802.11b Multi-hop Experiments and Analysis

IEEE 802.11b has become a prominent standard to provide wireless connections between mobile nodes, and often also through an access point (AP) to a wired LAN. All kinds of traffic may be handled by the wireless networks formed, including multimedia traffic. However, the standard comes with some inherent problems, such as channel interference, the hidden node problem and the exposed node problem. All these problems will affect the quality, bandwidth and performance of the radio links between the mobile nodes and the APs, and consequently also the types of traffic they can support. In addition, the problems also limit the distance between the mobile nodes and APs, and the topology of the wireless network they form. The degradation of service is especially not negligible when the topology involves multi-hops and routing in the network. In this paper, we look at the performance of multi-hop wireless networks and identify some effects of channel interference on the network performance