Link-level measurements from an 802.11b mesh network

  • Authors:

  • Daniel Aguayo;John Bicket;Sanjit Biswas;Glenn Judd;Robert Morris

  • Affiliations:

  • M.I.T. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory;M.I.T. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory;M.I.T. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory;Carnegie Mellon University;M.I.T. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2004 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the causes of packet loss in a 38-node urban multi-hop 802.11b network. The patterns and causes of loss are important in the design of routing and error-correction protocols, as well as in network planning.The paper makes the following observations. The distribution of inter-node loss rates is relatively uniform over the whole range of loss rates; there is no clear threshold separating "in range" and "out of range." Most links have relatively stable loss rates from one second to the next, though a small minority have very bursty losses at that time scale. Signal-to-noise ratio and distance have little predictive value for loss rate. The large number of links with intermediate loss rates is probably due to multi-path fading rather than attenuation or interference.The phenomena discussed here are all well-known. The contributions of this paper are an understanding of their relative importance, of how they interact, and of the implications for MAC and routing protocol design.