IEEE 802.11b based ad hoc networking and its performance in mobile channels

It is widely believed that IEEE 802.11 standard is aimed mainly for fixed indoor wireless local area networks and is not suited for mobile applications, even though the IEEE 802.11b systems may work in either infrastructure mode or ad hoc mode. The impact of node mobility on ad hoc network performance has already been studied intensively, but these studies mostly do not consider temporal fluctuations of the mobile wireless channel due to the Doppler shift. An investigation of the mobility impact on the performance of IEEE 802.11b ad hoc systems with Rician/Rayleigh fading under different node velocities is presented. A comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the impacts of a multitude of different signal distortions on an IEEE 802.11b system performance is also presented. Specifically, the authors study the bit-error rate performances with respect to node velocities for different modulation schemes. The simulation results show that, owing to its extremely low implementation and deployment cost, the current IEEE 802.11b standard has its potential to be deployed in a mobile ad hoc environment if the line-of-sight path between transmitter and receiver exists.