Analysis of Wireless Network in Freight Container Terminal and Methods for Service Quality Enhancement

The number of industry wireless networks based on IEEE 802.11 WLAN technology deployed in large outdoor work sites, such as freight container terminal, is increasing these days. Wider service coverage, frequent movements of stations and high requirement on service reliability are main characteristics of these networks compared to the conventional IEEE 802.11 networks used in home, office and school. While the importance of these networks Bets higher, we can hardly find previous studies including concrete analysis on these networks based on actual experiments. We carried out several field experiments at a freight container terminal to analyze its IEEE 802.11 network and found out some problematic situations, such as over 50% retransmission rates and frequent disruption of communication link while a station is moving. We explain why these problematic situations happen and suggest some solutions, such as application of mesh technology, smart handoff based on location and movement pattern and adjustment of signal strength and channel allocation. Methods and tools used in the experiments are also detailed in the paper which may be helpful for similar future studies.