Evaluation of Smart Antennas for IEEE 802.11a/g Systems

Garret Okamoto, Shu-Ting Lee, Chih-Wei Chen

Electrical Engineering Department,
Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053 USA
e-mail: gokamoto@scu.edu,{ndc_lee, cchen4}@scudc.scu.edu

Abstract

The IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) standard has achieved widespread worldwide acceptance. However, current limitations have prevented WLANs from being accepted in certain markets and applications. These problems include limited range, low capacity, high power drain, coverage dead spots, co-channel interference, and security. These issues, aside from security, can be addressed by smart antennas, which can provide significant performance benefits for WLANs. This paper discusses simulation results studying the benefits that smart antennas provide for WLANs. The IEEE 802.11a/g standards are simulated to evaluate the performance of beamforming and slot allocation for an 802.11-compatible implementation. The SINR gain of a smart antenna-enabled access point (AP) is also evaluated. Simulation results show that the BER, SINR gain, and throughput rate can be improved when using a smart antenna-enabled 802.11-compatible AP.

Keywords: 802.11, SDMA, smart antenna, smart wireless LAN