Empirical investigation of IEEE 802.11ad network

The IEEE 802.11ad standard allows wireless devices to operate in the unlicensed spectrum band of 60 GHz. By utilizing the channel with 2.16 GHz width, the devices are able to transmit at multi-Gigabit data rates that potentially satisfy demanding requirements of quality of services. Additionally, the advent of off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11ad device motivates research efforts to exploit this 60 GHz opportunity for applications. Although much has been understood from the previous works, there is still a lack of insight into building IEEE 802.11ad networks, especially the ones with multi-Gigabit links. Address the issue, this work investigates the feasibility of multi-Gigabit IEEE 802.11ad networks, as well as, the factors that influence network performance in a typical office environment. By experimental study with off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11ad hardware, we can identify the conditions that the TCP and UDP throughput of IEEE 802.11ad link reach multi-Gigabit levels. Moreover, we show and discuss the negative effects of both co-channel and adjacent channel interference on the IEEE 802.11ad network's performance.