Measurement and comparison of wi-fi and super wi-fi indoor propagation characteristics in a multi-floored building

Super Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi-like service exploiting TV white space (WS) which is expected to achieve larger coverage than today's Wi-Fi thanks to its superior propagation characteristics. Super Wi-Fi has been materialized as an international standard, IEEE 802.11af, targeting indoor and outdoor applications, and is undergoing worldwide field tests. This paper demonstrates the true potential of indoor Super Wi-Fi, by experimentally comparing the signal propagation characteristics of SuperWi-Fi andWi-Fi in the same indoor environment. Specifically, we measured the wall and floor attenuation factors and the path-loss distribution at 770MHz, 2.401 GHz, and 5.540 GHz, and predicted the downlink capacity of Wi-Fi and Super Wi-Fi. The experimental results have revealed that TVWS signals can penetrate up to two floors above and below, whereas Wi-Fi signals experience significant path loss even through a single floor. It has been also shown that Super Wi-Fi mitigates shaded regions of Wi-Fi by providing almost-homogeneous data rates within its coverage, performs comparable to Wi-Fi utilizing less bandwidth, and always achieves better spectral efficiency than Wi-Fi. The observed phenomena imply that SuperWi-Fi is suitable for indoor applications and has the potential of extending horizontal and vertical coverage of today's Wi-Fi.

[1]  Jennifer Urner,et al.  Antenna Theory And Design , 2016 .

[2]  M. Lecours,et al.  Measurement and modeling of propagation losses in a building at 900 MHz , 1990 .

[3]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Wireless communications - principles and practice , 1996 .

[4]  Zhao Zhao,et al.  Measurement and ray-tracing of wideband indoor channel in UHF TV white space , 2011, CogART '11.

[5]  Henry L. Bertoni,et al.  Mechanisms governing UHF propagation on single floors in modern office buildings , 1992 .

[6]  David J. Edwards,et al.  Bandwidth-dependent modelling of small-scale fade depth in wireless channels , 2008 .

[7]  I. Forkel,et al.  A multi-wall-and-floor model for indoor radio propagation , 2001, IEEE VTS 53rd Vehicular Technology Conference, Spring 2001. Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37202).

[8]  Viet-Ha Pham,et al.  A Study on the Channel and Signal Cross Correlation of UHF DTV Channels , 2007, 2007 International Symposium on Signals, Systems and Electronics.

[9]  Dong Chao,et al.  Universal Software Radio Peripheral , 2010 .

[10]  Marina Petrova,et al.  Wi-Fi, but not on Steroids: Performance analysis of a Wi-Fi-like Network operating in TVWS under realistic conditions , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).

[11]  Donald C. Cox,et al.  UHF propagation in indoor hallways , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[12]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  In-building wideband partition loss measurements at 2.5 and 60 GHz , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[13]  Changhee Joo,et al.  Downlink capacity of Super Wi-Fi coexisting with conventional Wi-Fi , 2013, 2013 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[14]  N.I. Sarkar,et al.  Wi-Fi Performance Measurements in the Crowded Office Environment: a Case Study , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Communication Technology.

[15]  S. Seidel,et al.  914 MHz path loss prediction models for indoor wireless communications in multifloored buildings , 1992 .