Implementation and Evaluation of WLAN 802.11ac for Residential Networks in NS-3

Abstract

Wi-Fi has been an amazingly successful technology. Its success may be attributed to the fact that, despite the significant advances made in technology over the last decade, it has remained backward compatible. 802.11ac is the latest version of the wireless LAN (WLAN) standard that is currently being adopted, and it promises to deliver very high throughput (VHT), operating at the 5 GHz band. In this paper, we report on an implementation of 802.11ac wireless LAN for residential scenario based on the 802.11ax task group scenario document. We evaluate the 802.11ac protocol performance under different operating conditions. Key features such as modulation coding set (MCS), frame aggregation, and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) were investigated. We also evaluate the average throughput, delay, jitter, optimum range for goodput, and effect of station (STA) density per access point (AP) in a network. ns-3, an open source network simulator with features supporting 802.11ac, was used to perform the simulation. Results obtained indicate that very high data rates are achievable. The highest data rate, the best mean delay, and mean jitter are possible under combined features of 802.11ac (MIMO and A-MPDU).