Performance and Immunity Evaluation of Complete WLAN Systems in a Large Reverberation Chamber

This paper concerns the use of a large reverberation chamber (RC) to test a wireless local area network system based on both 802.11b/g and 802.11n standards including multiple input and multiple output (MIMO). A whole link established between commercial devices operates inside the RC under different loading conditions, varying the stirrer rotating speed and the paddle dimensions. The effects of this multipath environment on system performance are checked measuring the number of cyclic redundancy check error and the number of data retries. The comparison between the two systems is done adopting the same chamber loading condition and also stressing the system reducing the load, up to the link connection limit. Results show the higher performance of the MIMO system, able to maintain a 6-Mb/s data rate connection also with a chamber quality factor of 21 000. The same RC is used to carry out a radiated immunity test. The undesired signal is both a modulated and continuous wave injected into the active channel and into adjacent channels. Results reveal the high robustness of the 802.11n standard with respect to b and g standards when it operates in a hostile environment reproduced by an RC.