Experimental performance evaluation of Wireless 802.11b networks

According to the IEEE 802.11 b/g standard (WiFi) should have a range of 300-500 ft (about 152 m). The 2.4 GHz frequency band used by WiFi devices is divided into 11 (in FCC) (or 13 in ETSI) partially overlapping channels. It is claimed that by using frequency bands that are at least four channels apart (non-overlapping channels) interference between those channels is avoided. We carried out two types of experiments to measure the effect of the distance and the claimed non-overlapping channels on the bit rate. From the first study, we experimentally derived a model of distance versus throughput. The second study has confirmed that the interference between the channels cannot be avoided even when using non-overlapping channels. The experiments also showed that by increasing the distance between the networks that are using non-overlapping channels, the effect of the interference decreases.