PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

OF OFDM BASED WLAN

(802.11a AND 802.11g)
by
KAVISH KUMAR

Under the Noble guidance of

Prof. Y.K. Mishra and Prof. Dr. R.K. Singh

Wireless LAN(WLAN)

Advantages:
Wired communication networks can provide connectivity not
PORTABILITY or MOBILITY.
Simplicity, Low cost, easy installation, Location freedom and
High Data Rate are some other great features.

Uses DSSS, FHSS or OFDM modulation techniques(which are Spread

Spectrum techniques) to achieve high data rate.

Wireless LAN Architecture

IEEE 802.11 architecture consists of several components and services.

Components are:
Stations(STA)
Access Points(AP)
Wireless Medium
Basic service set(BSS)
Distribution System(DS)
Extended service set(ESS)

Services can be categorised into STAs services and Distribution services.

STAs services: Authentication, de-authentication, Privacy and delivery of data.
Distribution services: Association, re-association, disassociation, distribution
and
Integration.

Station is basic component of wireless network which may be work

station, laptop or mobile. It contains necessary hardware or software to
communicate with other stations. Hardware contains IEEE specified 802.11
MAC and PHY interface to wireless network.
Access Points(AP): These devices provide interconnection between
different stations(wired or wireless).
Wireless Medium: Medium is used to move frame from one station to
another station.
Basic Service Set(BSS): Collection
communicate with each other

of stations that are able to

within 802.11 WLAN.

Distribution System(DS): Its a fixed wired infrastructure used to

connect a set of BSSs to create an extended service set (ESS).

Extended Service Set(ESS): Consists of multiple IEEE 802.11 BSSs

forming single subnet work where the AP communicate each other to
forward traffic from one BSS to other.

History of IEEE 802.11

There have been 5 major milestones in wireless internet
communication.
802.11 Released in 1997, the original wireless protocol
802.11a Released in late 1999
802.11b Released in late 1999
802.11g Released in mid 2003
802.11n Released in 2009

Problems

Wireless standards are varying more quickly rather than Wired LAN
because it requires upgrade so consumer have to change or upgrade
their NICs with every improved standard.

Operation possible at limited distances from APs. More APs are required
to increase range which ultimately increases the overall cost.

Data rate drops if user moves further from AP.

Multipath

Interference

Fading

Goals

Basic services which are very important to consumers are:

Performance
Connectivity
Mobility
High data rates

Using OFDM to increase the data rate by transmitting segmented data

over several carriers and thus overcome Multipath problem.
Using IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g because they operate in OFDM hence
reduces multipath.

IEEE 802.11
The IEEE 802.11 is the most mature and rapidly growing technology
worldwide. It consist detailed specifications for medium access
control(MAC) and three physical layers (PHY).
The PHY layer selects the correct modulation scheme that provides spread
spectrum in channel accessibility, data rate as well as the necessary
bandwidth.
The PHY layer uses three main wireless data exchange techniques:

Frequency hopping spread spectrum(FHSS).

Direct sequence spread spectrum(DSSS).

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM).

Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum

Frequency spectrum is divided into channels and data is transmitted on

these channels in random pattern known only to transmitter.

Follow different random patterns or hop tables, so if interference is

present in one channel, Tx and Rx hop onto another channel.

It is therefore FHSS works best for small packets in high interference

environment.
Frequency
spectrum divided
into channels on
which data is
transmitted
randomly on any
channel.

Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum

The stream of data is divided into small pieces and combined with
higher data bit sequence(Pseudorandom code) and then transmitted.

The redundant code helps the signal resist interference and also enables
the original data to be recovered if data bits are damaged during the
transmission.
When the DSSS
signal is decoded
back to
its original
narrowband state,
the narrowband
inference picked up
during transmission
is
decoded to a lower
power density signal
and is
ignored by the

Conclusion for DSSS vs FHSS

FHSS can be a cost-effective wireless LAN to deploy if needs for network
bandwidth are 2 Mbps or less. Direct Sequence systems are more reliable
and optimal for bandwidth requirements higher than 2Mbps and/or user
intensive applications. Advantages include:

Higher data rates per AP - Higher speed connections deliver more

bandwidth, Faster AP signal acquisition keeps productivity high .

Greater tolerance of noise in the channel delivers better network

efficiency

Data delivery - If one or more DS chips in a data stream are disrupted

the entire data bit can still be recovered due to the redundancy of the
transmission.

Wider industry acceptance and radio chip availability, FH limits users to

one vendor.

Although DS and FH networks may coexist, the devices are not

interoperable. These critical performance factors are part of the reason
why the IEEE has adopted DSSS technology as part of its 802.11 set of

Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiplexing

Its Multi-Carrier Modulation technique for data transmission by dividing

a high-bit rate data stream in several parallel low bit-rate data
streams and using these low bit-rate data streams to modulate
several carriers.

IEEE 802.11 adopted OFDM because of its high data rate transmission
capability wirelessly.

The main reason to adopt OFDM was to increase the robustness against
frequency selective fading and narrow interference.

Some important features are:

High spectral efficiency
Great flexibility
Confirmation to available channel bandwidth.
More efficient than DSSS because of high data rate transmit
power and receive sensitivity.

IEEE 802.11a PHY LAYER

802.11a PHY uses OFDM in 5GHz U-NII band.

PHY layer is divided into two sub layers namely Physical Medium
Dependent (PMD) and Physical Layer Convergence Procedure(PLCP)
layer.

The IEEE 802.11a PHY layer is same as OFDM PHY layer.

P L C P -H

R A T E
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C od
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6 b its

P S D U

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P a d

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F D M sy m b ol

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ted

b y sig

D a ta
b er of O

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OFDM PLCP sub-layer of IEEE 802.11a

n a l sy

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m b ols

sy

m b ols

PHY layer Contd.

PLCP Preamble: It consist of 10 short and 2 long OFDM symbols to train

the receiver to tune AGC(automatic gain control) and refine estimate of
the carrier frequency and to fine-tune during data transmission.

Rate: This field is used to encode the data rate. The 4 bit rate is used to
encode the data rate. Ex: 1101 for 6Mbps.

Reserved: It must be set to a logic zero and can be reserved for future.

Length: A 12 bits field specify the number of octets in the PSDU enclose
with the Mac frame. It is used to send least significant bit (LSB) to most
significant bit (MSB).

Parity: It contains a single-bit value that is used to provide even parity

for error checking.

Tail: 6 bits are set to 0 for the tail signal.

Services: Its a 16 bit services field. 0-6 bits are set to 0 to initialize the
scramble and the remaining bits 7-15 for future use.

IEEE 802.11g

Extends the data rate of the IEEE 802.11b to 54Mbps from 11Mbps by
using OFDM and operates in 2.4GHz band same as 802.11b.

Higher performance and backward compatibility to 802.11b therefore

providing consumers a clean path to upgraded performance in a mixed
network.

Low frequency spectrum use of 2.4GHz lets the range increase as

wavelength is inversely proportional to distance and longer waveform
tend to propagate better through solid mediums.

2.4GHZ use provides significant Cost reduction which results in

increasing production of 802.11g.

802.11b uses DSSS which has lower data rate (11Mbps) and signal
gradually degrades in long ranges.

Simulation

Simulation is a powerful tool because it provides accurate result without

implementation in real world.

IEEE 802.11a/g PHY used OFDM modulation with the combination of

different modulation schemes and coding rates.

The performance of the system model tested through different

modulation schemes such as BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM and 64 QAM with an
AWGN channel and OFDM modulator and demodulator.
Data rate

Modulation

(Mbps)

Coding rate
(R)

Coded bits per

subcarrier

Coded bits per

OFDM symbol

(NBPSC )

(NCBPS )

Data bits per

OFDM symbol
(NDBPS )

BPSK

1/2

48

24

BPSK

3/4

48

36

12

QPSK

1/2

96

48

18

QPSK

3/4

96

72

24

16 QAM

1/2

192

96

36

16 QAM

1/2

192

144

48

64 QAM

2/3

288

192

54

64 QAM

3/4

288

216

Rate dependent parameters of 802.11a/g

Simulation Contd.

OFDM provides modes with different code rates and modulation

schemes (QPSK, QAMs)due to good performance on highly dispersive
channels which are selected through link adaptation.

All the simulation results are comparison between computer system

simulation BER and theoretical BER for serial systems.

Bit error rate is given by:

Signal to noise ratio is given by:

Simulation Contd.

The result calculated almost 10000 symbols and 1000 symbols to find
average BER to see the consistency of the modulation method.

Thus theoretical and practical results of BER match.

10000
symbls

1000
symbls

Simulation Contd.

Simulation result of 16 QAM and 64 QAM are shown.

We see that 64 QAM is much better than 16 QAM when BER decrease
SNR will increase because SNR is stronger than noise.

Conclusion

It is found that 802.11a/g provides similar quality except IEEE 802.11g

provides wider range whereas 802.11a has range limitations which can
be adjusted by installing more APs which would cost much.

Main disadvantage of the 802.11g is the frequency band is common and

interference from other networking technology such as Bluetooth,
cordless phones but IEEE 802.11a avoids this interference because it
operates in 5 GHz band.

64 QAM modulation is much better than 16 QAM because when BER

decrease SNR will increase making signal stronger than noise.

64 QAM needs higher bandwidth and give an excellent data rates as

compared to 16 QAM.

It has been shown that signal attenuation at 5GHz is significantly higher

due to the increased losses associated with free space propagation and
through wall attenuation.

Future Work

Future research work will consider IEEE 802.11 standard. The

performance analysis of the IEEE 802.11g and IEEE 802.11n/ac because
high data rate is a main issue of Wireless Network and IEEE 802.11n
uses Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) and 40 MHz channel.

This standard is deployed in current systems.

References

802.11g white paper-The new mainstream wireless LAN standard.

White paper 802.11g-WP104-R

Angela Doufexi, Simon Armour, Beng-Sin Lee, Andrew Nix and David Bull
An Evaluation of the Performance of IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g Wireless
Local Area Networks in a Corporate Office Environment

Narendra Giradkar, G.M.Asutkar, Abhijit Maidamwar OFDM based PHY

Performance of IEEE 802.11a Using Various practical channel models

Banner Frequency Hop Spread Spectrum vs. Direct Sequence Spread

Spectrum

Oppenheim Digital Signal Processing