The market for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) has experienced
tremendous growth over the last few years and this trend is expected to continue
in the future. This growth is due to the fact that wireless LANs provide several
benefits including mobility, efficiency, and accuracy. In addition, the cost of
installation for wireless LANs is several orders of magnitude lower than with
traditional wired LANs due to reduced cabling costs.
The two major components of a WLAN are Access Points (APs) and
Radio Cards (RCs). Efforts have been made in the past to assess the performance
of different APs and RCs from different vendors. However, these evaluations
have been restricted to tests of interoperability and roaming. Tests to assess
performance with respect to range, throughput, and power consumption are less
common. Moreover, these tests are usually performed using homogeneous test
beds (i.e., hardware components belong to the same vendor).
The objective of this research was to assess how commercial-off-the-shelf
(COTS) WLAN systems perform with respect to interoperability, roaming ability,
power consumption, throughput, and range. In order to accomplish this, a test
procedure composed of five experiments was developed. The evaluation was
performed not only on homogeneous systems but also on systems constructed
with hardware components from different vendors (i.e., heterogeneous).
The results of the performance tests indicated that the different AP, RC,
and their combinations, significantly affect the performance of the WLAN
systems with respect to range, throughput, and power consumption. No
significant differences were observed in the WLAN systems with respect to
interoperability or roaming.
The results of this research will help decision makers in understanding the
key parameters that have to be considered when selecting WLAN equipment. In
practice, however, it would be difficult for decision makers to determine which
vendor of WLAN equipment has the best solution without actual testing. / Graduation date: 2003
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/30326 |
| Date | 17 December 2002 |
| Creators | Paotrakool, Kittiporn |
| Contributors | Porter, J. David |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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