Capacity aware Wi-Fi networks deployment

Abstract

Wireless technologies are used in almost every application domain. Applications have different requirements in terms of quality of service and network performance. When designing a wireless network, it is important to know the expected performance of the system. Including the application needs in the design of the network would help achieve the required performance. This paper focuses on the high throughput required for a Smart Farming use case. Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology had greatly boosted the performance of wireless networks by introducing beamforming, which provides many benefits allowing wider coverage and better data rates. We propose a capacity-aware coverage study for Wi-Fi networks deployment in rural areas. We make our coverage estimations based on link budget calculations. We compare different deployment strategies and discuss the added value of beamforming. Our results are based on an analytical link budget estimation and a simulation study using the NS-3 simulator. We added all the needed functionalities on top of the existing Wi-Fi Module in NS-3. Results in terms of capacity, coverage, and number of access points deployed are discussed. We also developed an empirical analytical model that is based on the simulation results, which helps in estimating performance results for any deployment field size.