The impact of power limitations and adjacent residence interference on the performance of WLANs for home networking applications

This paper considers the application of 5 GHz wireless LAN technology to home networking applications. An assessment of physical layer performance is presented for both the IEEE 802.11a and HIPERLAN/2 standards in the form of achievable data rate as a function of received signal to noise ratio. The transmit power limitations imposed by the relevant regulatory bodies are presented and the implications of transmit power amplifier limitations considered. Based on this information, a state of the art propagation modelling tool is used to evaluate the performance of the 802.11a and HIPERLAN/2 systems in an example residential environment. The achievable data rate and coverage is evaluated for a variety of scenarios and the implications of potential co-residence interference are evaluated. It is found that data rates greater than 20 Mbits/s can be achieved with 100% coverage if the access point is well located and the transmit power is high. Even in the case where transmit power is severely limited, data rates in excess of 10 Mbits/s can be achieved throughout much of the example environment. Adjacent residence interference is found to have a severe debilitating effect and is thus identified as topic of crucial importance.