Performance enhancement by using switch-beam smart antenna in 802.11a WLAN system

Author

Chu, Shao-Hua ; Lin, Hsin-Piao ; Lin, Ding-Bing

Author_Institution

Inst. of Comput., Commun. & Control, Nat. Taipei Univ. of Technol., Taiwan

fYear

2005

fDate

3-7 April 2005

Firstpage

1001

Lastpage

1005

Abstract

An IEEE 802.11a WLAN system physical layer use coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (COFDM) to combat frequency selective fading channel. The WLAN system with omni antenna suffers excess delay spread and inter-symbol interference in indoor radio propagation channel. The impact of frequency selective fading channel on WLAN performance is evaluated. Wireless communication usually utilizes smart antenna to enhance performance. This paper presents Monte Carlo simulation based on the IEEE 802.11a physical layer specification and utilizes switch-beam smart antenna operation at the access point (AP) to enhance WLAN performance. The paper analyzes the performance of using omni and switch-beam antenna in a real office indoor environment. Compared with using omni antenna, the simulation results show that utilizing switch-beam antenna in AP the BER performance improve about 2 dB in light-of-sight (LOS) case, and 6 dB in non-light-of-sight (NLOS) case.

Keywords

Monte Carlo methods; adaptive antenna arrays; error statistics; fading channels; indoor radio; wireless LAN; 802.11a WLAN system; BER; Monte Carlo simulation; NLOS; access point; frequency selective fading channel; indoor environment; nonlight-of-sight; physical layer specification; switch-beam smart antenna; Antennas and propagation; Communication switching; Fading; Frequency; Indoor radio communication; Interference; OFDM; Physical layer; Propagation delay; Wireless LAN;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Wireless Communications and Applied Computational Electromagnetics, 2005. IEEE/ACES International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9068-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WCACEM.2005.1469752

Filename

1469752