1-4244-0983-7/07/$25.

00 2007 IEEE ICICS 2007

Throughput Performance Analysis and Experimental
Evaluation of IEEE 802.11b Radio Link

Churong Chen
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
chen0124@ntu.edu.sg
Choi Look Law
Positioning and Wireless Technology Centre
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
ecllaw@ntu.edu.sg


AbstractIn this paper, parameters such as basic data rate,
packet size as well as MAC scheme that restrict saturation
throughput were studied in details. An analytical model has been
developed based on theoretical analysis and experimental study
to predict the throughput performance in IEEE 802.11b WLANs.
Impact of mobility on the throughput performance was also
evaluated for any deployment of WLAN. Subsequently, the
throughput performance analytical model was modified to
predict throughput performance in any physical environment
taking into account the effect of channel conditions.
Measurements were conducted in parallel to verify the analysis
and modifications were made to the theoretical model for realistic
scenario.
KeywordsIEEE 802.11b, mobility effect, throughput
performance, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN).
I. INTRODUCTION
The IEEE 802.11b is experiencing great success in wireless
communication market. It has widely extended the accessibility
of computer networks. However, due to changes of the wireless
link conditions caused by interference, movement, and
obstacles it introduces much higher transmission error than
those based on wired links. The link quality, which is reflected
by Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), varies with the wireless
channel condition.
The aim of this study is to first predict the saturation
throughput performance in an IEEE 802.11b Wireless Local
Area Network (WLAN) at MAC layer given the MAC scheme,
basic data rate and frame size. Subsequently, the effect of
mobility support on throughput performance in IEEE 802.11
WLANs is evaluated to predict the throughput performance in
any physical environment taking into account of channel
condition.
Maximum throughput performance of IEEE 802.11b was
previously studied by other researchers [4]. However, this
paper presents a more general throughput prediction model for
IEEE 802.11b WLANs. The basic model is further improved to
take into consideration of IP fragmentation and wireless
channel condition. Measurement methodology is also designed
to study throughput performance under different wireless
channel condition to verify the analysis.
This paper is structured as follows. Section II provides an
overview of the IEEE 802.11b standard and summarizes the
basic throughput prediction model for IEEE 802.11b WLANs
to predict the throughput performance given the MAC scheme,
basic data rate and frame size. Section III modifies the basic
prediction model to cater for IP fragmentation and channel
error. Section IV illustrates systematic experiments and
measurements done in parallel with theoretical analysis to
verify the developed analytical model. Section V concludes the
study and proposes some future work.
II. BASIC THROUGHPUT PREDICTION MODEL
In terms of the OSI reference model, IEEE 802.11b covers
the Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY)
layers. The PHY layer is divided into a PLCP (Physical Layer
Convergence Protocol) sublayer and a PMD (Physical Medium
Dependent) sublayer [1, 2].
A PDU at each layer is defined as the length of the
transmission unit at that layer including the overhead. A SDU
(Service Data Unit) is defined as the length of the payload that
a particular layer provides to the layer above [3]. When
transmitting a packet of data which comes from the application
layer, headers have to be added for each layer, making the total
transfer packet size larger.
The saturation throughput of 802.11b can be defined as the
maximum amount of MAC Layer Service Data Unit (MSDU)
that can be transmitted in a time unit [4].
MSDU size
Throughput =
Delay per MSDU

(1)
Where the total delay per MSDU depends on which MAC
scheme is used in the transmission.
For CSMA/CA MAC scheme, a transmission cycle
composes of the following phases that are repeated over time:
(1) DIFS deferral phase; (2) Back off (BO)/contention; (3) Data
(or MPDU) transmission phase; (4) SIFS deferral phase; and
(5) ACK transmission phase. Therefore, the delay per MSDU
can be calculated as:
DIFS BO DATA SIFS ACK
T + T + T + T + T
(2)

For RTS/CTS MAC scheme, a transmission cycle
composes of the following phases that are repeated over time:
(1) DIFS deferral phase; (2) BO (Back off)/contention; (3) RTS
transmission phase; (4) SIFS deferral phase; (5) CTS
transmission phase; (6) SIFS deferral phase; (7) Data (or
MPDU) transmission phase; (8) SIFS deferral phase; and (9)
ACK transmission phase. Therefore, the total delay per MSDU
for RTS/CTS MAC scheme can be calculated as:
DIFS BO RTS SIFS CTS SIFS DATA SIFS ACK
T + T + T + T + T + T + T + T + T

(3)
The values of each fixed delays specified in IEEE 802.11b
standard are shown in TABLE I.
TABLE I. IEEE 802.11B PHY PARAMETERS
Parameter Value Comments
aSlotTime 20 sec Slot Time
aSIFSTime 10 sec SIFS Time
aDIFSTime 50 sec aDIFSTime = aSIFSTime + 2*
aSlotTime
aCWmin 31 Minimum Contention Window
aCWmax 1023 Maximum Contention Window
tPLCPPreamble 144 sec PLCP Preamble Duration
tPLCPHeader 48 sec PLCP Header Duration

The data transmission time can be calculated as in equation
(4).
DATA PLCP Header PLCP Preamble
MPDU
T = T + T +
Datarate
(4)
The PLCP preamble and header parameters are always
transmitted at 1 Mbps, regardless of the data transmission rate.
Hence they are treated as constant value (192 sec for long
preamble PLCP) in the calculation.
In this study, it is assumed that there is no collision in the
network, therefore the BO time would be randomly selected
between [0, CWmin]. The equation of BO time is given as:
Backoff Time = Random() aSlotTime
(5)
Where Random () = pseudorandom integer drawn from a
uniform distribution over the interval [0, CWmin]. aSlotTime =
value of corresponding PHY characteristics, which is 20s in
this case.
Assuming that BO is randomly distributed from [0,
CWmin], it will give an expected average value of CWmin/2.
The value of BO would then be:
31
BO = 20 310
2
s s =
(6)
Summing up all the fixed delays specified by the standard
in a transmission cycle, the saturation throughput of an IEEE
802.11b data frame can be evaluated for both schemes as
follows.
For CSMA/CA MAC scheme:
[ ]
MSDU 8
(MSDU+28) 8 14 8
754 + +
Data Rate Data Rate'

( (
( (


(7)
For RTS/CTS MAC scheme:
[ ]
MSDU 8
(MSDU+28) 8 14 8 20 8 14 8
1158 + +
Data Rate Data Rate' Data Rate' Data Rate'
( ( ( (
+ +
( ( ( (

(8)
Where Data Rate is the transmission rate of a MPDU and
Data Rateis the transmission rate of the MAC control frames
(ACK, RTS and CTS).
III. IMPROVED THROUGHPUT PREDICTION MODELS
A. Throughput Model with IP Fragmentation
The prediction model can be applied to analyze the real
WLANs performance with some modifications made to better
characterize the practical scenarios. The first issue is the IP
fragmentation. In the case of Ethernet, the Maximum
Transmission Unit (MTU) in network layer is 1,500 bytes.
Therefore, packets with size larger than its MTU will be
fragmented in Network layer. Though 802.11b accepts much
larger packets (2,346 bytes), the Network layer is not aware of
that and fragments the packets in order to optimize the
performance. A packet can be fragmented into more than one
segment. All the segment transmission time is calculated as
shown.
First n-1 Segment Transmission Time
[ ]
1
T =
(M+8)

1480
(MPDU') 8 14 8
754 + +
Data Rate Data Rate'
| | ( (
| ( (
\ .
(

(


(9)
Where MPDU = 1500 +36, here n is the total number of
segments in a packet; 1500 is the Network layer MTU size and
36 is the sum of 8 bytes of Logical Link Control (LLC) layer
overhead and 28 bytes of MAC header; and M is the
transmitting packet size.
Last Segment Transmission Time,
[ ]
2
(MPDU'') 8 14 8
T = 754
Data Rate Data Rate
+ +
'
( (
( (

(10)
Where, MPDU = Mod[(M+8), 1480] +56, here 8 is the
UDP header and 56 is the total overheads of the rest of layers
(20 bytes of IP header, 8 bytes of LLC header and 28 bytes of
MAC header).
Therefore, the basic throughput model is modified as shown
in equation (11) to predict the performance of the wireless
network more accurately in real scenarios.

1 2
M 8
Throughput =
T T

+
(11)
B. Throughput Model Accounting For Wireless Channel
Condition
In wireless ad hoc network, the link quality between two
nodes degrades as one moves away from the other. The link
quality, which is reflected by Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR),
varies with the wireless channel condition. The channel quality
depends on many factors, including the separation distance and
the obstacles between the two nodes, as well as external
interference in the channel. In this section, the throughput
prediction model is further improved to take into consideration
of channel condition effect.
1) Wireless Channel Condition Description
There are a few factors to consider when modeling the
channel conditions. The first factor is the distance. As the
distance increases, Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the link
decreases and the Frame Error Rate (FER) in the channel
increases. This subsequently affects the throughput
performance.
Another factor is the external interference. The interference
not only increases the noise level of the desired signal, but also
affects the MAC mechanism in wireless link. The effect can be
classified into two models: the protocol model and the physical
model [5]. In the protocol model, concurrent transmissions
from any node within the interference range of a receiver will
cause a collision, which subsequently result in packet loss from
its corresponding sender. In the physical model, a packet from
the sender is lost at the receiver only if the signal-to
interference- plus-noise-ratio (SINR) [6] falls below a given
threshold. In our study, we first consider only the physical
model of the interference by carrying out measurements in a
controlled scenario without the protocol effect. The
interference effect can then be simply treated as another type of
noise in the throughput evaluation.
As a result, the effect of separation distance and external
interference can be combined and the wireless channel
condition can be modeled by SINR.
2) Improved Throughput Prediction Model
After examining the factors that determine the channel
condition, an analytical model on throughput performance with
consideration of channel error is formulated based on IEEE
802.11b MAC mechanism.
SINR computation has a strong correlation with FER on the
channel. It can be related to FER in the following equations.
First, the probability of bit error in Differential Binary
Phase Shift Keying (DBPSK) [7] can be expressed as:
b 0
-E / N
1
BER= exp
2
(12)
Eb/No can be related to SNR as:
b T
0
E B S
=
N N R

(13)
Where B
T
is the signal bandwidth; R is the transmission
data rate.
Obviously, the error performance of a modulation scheme
varies with different SNR values.
The frame error rate in a channel can be expressed in terms
of BER as:
8L
FER= 1-(1-BER)
(14)
Where 8L here is the frame size in bits.
Furthermore, the FER for an L-bytes long data frame taking
into account of MAC mechanism is derived:
m 1 m
FER (data_L) = 1 (1 FER (24) ) (1 FER (28 L) ) +
(15)
Where m = 1, 2, 3 and 4 is the PHY mode representing 1, 2,
5.5 and 11 Mbps transmission rate in IEEE 802.11b,
respectively; FER
1
(24) is the probability of error of the PLCP
preamble/header transmitted using PHY mode 1; FER
m
(28+L)
is the probability of error of the MPDU including the MAC
overhead.
An ACK frame is transmitted at the rate equals to or lower
than the data frame rate, and is 14 bytes long, which is usually
much shorter than the data frame. Therefore, the error
probability of the ACK frame is very low compared to the error
probability of the data frame, and hence ignored in the
calculation here.
The network throughput accounting for the channel errors is
defined as:
actual
No. of frames sent (1-FER)
Throughput =
Total Time Delay

(16)
Where FER is the frame error rate due to the channel error
and the unit for the throughput is frame per second. And Total
Time Delay = No. of frames sent * Delay per second. , hence,
the network throughput can be converted into bits per second
(bps) by multiplying the frame length and the actual throughput
becomes:
actual
max
8L (1-FER)
Throughput =
Delay per MSDU
= Throughput (1-FER)

(17)
Where Throughput
max
is the maximum throughput for ideal
channel condition.
IV. E XPERIMENTS
Experiments were conducted to verify the accuracy of the
formulated analytical models.
The experiment setup is as shown in Fig. 1. An ad-hoc
network was established between node 1 and node 2.
Throughput performance of the network was measured by
NetIQ Chariot [8] with application scripts that emulate the real
network data flow while network traffics were monitored by
observer node using AiroPeek 802.11 Wireless Network
Protocol Analyzer [9].


Figure 1. Experiment setup
Before verifying the accuracy of the analytical model to
predict the throughput performance with channel error, the
channel condition of the experimental environment has to be
investigated and modeled. A methodology was designed to
model the wireless network channel condition by measuring the
FER against Received Signal Strength (RSS) at different
positions of the mobile ad hoc link.
Node 1 and 2 were in an ad-hoc network with presence of
two wireless Access Points (APs) located in vicinity. The
transmitter was kept stationary while the receiver was moved
around in the ad-hoc network to capture the throughput
performance at different position of the network.
Iperf [10] was used as the traffic generator to create traffic
and to investigate the channel FER by reporting the datagram
loss in the wireless link. Constant Bit Rate (CBR) traffic, with
20 bytes payload and Iperf packet generation rate (16kbps)
were set to be lower than the channel transmission rate
(1 Mbps) so that the traffic in the channel is relatively light
compared to saturation throughput experiments. Under this
condition, it is assumed that there is no packet collision due to
beacons sent by the two APs. Traffic is thus reasonably light in
the channel and it can take in more traffic while maintaining
the quality of the transmission.
Adjacent channel interference effect from the two APs can
be deemed as negligible by choosing more than 3 channels
away from the APs transmitting channels. Therefore only the
physical model of the interference was considered in the
measurement.
Also, the traffic was set to operate in multicast mode so that
MAC-level features such as ACKs and RTS/CTS exchanges
were suppressed. It can then be assumed that MAC mechanism
will not have an effect on the test result. Consequently, the
measured RSS should perfectly reflect packet delivery.
The data of channel FER against RSS was collected at
different positions in the ad-hoc network and the interference
plus noise level under our test condition can be calculated
based on the analytical model presented in Section III Part B.
The wireless channel condition (Interference plus Noise) in our
experiments was found to be at around -90dBm.
After obtaining the SINR value under the condition, the
same experiment setup can be utilized to observe the
throughput performance taking into account of channel error.
V. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
A. Experimental Results for CSMA/CA
The comparisons of theoretical throughputs and
experimental throughputs obtained in the measurement for
CSMA/CA are presented in Fig. 2.

Figure 2. Measured Throughputs vs. MSDU Size for CSMA/CA
The experimental results are comparatively close to the
theoretical ones at low transmission rate of 1 Mbps and
2 Mbps. However the variation increases slightly as the
transmission rate increases (e.g. 5.5 Mbps, 11 Mbps). The
reason is that, as the transmission rate increases, the packet
delivery probability decreases under same channel conditions.
However, in our theoretical calculations, we assume that
channel condition is perfect (SINR is above certain threshold
and FER is 0).
B. Experimental Results for RTS/CTS
The comparisons of theoretical throughputs and
experimental throughputs obtained in the measurements for
RTS/CTS are presented in Fig. 3.
The presented graphs show a definite relationship between
network throughput and the data rate as well as the frame size.
There is also substantial correlation between the analytical
model and measured throughput graphs. Hence the analytical
model formulated in this study is validated and can be used to
predict throughput for RTS/CTS MAC scheme in any 802.11b
WLANs.

0
500 1000 1500
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
MSDU SIZE (Bytes)
NETWORK THROUGHPUT (Mbps)
THROUGHPUT VS MSDU SIZE FOR RTS/CTS
Theoretical at 11 Mbps
Experimental at 11Mbps
Theoretical at 5.5 Mbps
Experimental at 5.5Mbps
Theoretical at 2 Mbps
Experimental at 2 Mbps
Theoretical at 1 Mbps
Experimental at 1Mbps
0
500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
MSDU SIZE (Bytes)
NETWORK THROUGHPUT (Mbps)
THROUGHPUT VS MSDU SIZE FOR CSMA/CA
T for 1Mbps
M for 1Mbps
T for 2 Mbps
M for 2 Mbps
T for 5 Mbps
M for 5 Mbps
T for 11 Mbps
M for 11 Mbps
T: Theoretical Results
M: Measured Results

Figure 3. Measured Throughputs vs. MSDU Size for RTS/CTS
TABLE II. COMPARISON OF THEORETICAL AND MEASURED RESULT FOR
THROUGHPUT VS. RSS

Theoretical Result Measured Result
RSS (dBm) FER Throughput FER Throughput
-66 0 0.674 0 0.668
-76 0 0.674 0 0.663
-80 4.85E-06 0.674 0.004 0.663
-82 0.0077504 0.669 0.025 0.62
-84 0.559326 0.297 0.255 0.422
-86 0.9999998 0 0.388 0.348
-87 1 0 N/A N/A
C. Experimental Result Accounting for Channel FER
The theoretical results and the measured results taking into
account of channel FER are summarized in TABLE II for
comparison.
The theoretical results were calculated based on the
analytical model stated in Section III Part B.
As it can be seen from the tabulated results, the throughput
performance between the two nodes tends to operate in a very
steady manner until the RSS drops below a certain critical level
(-82 dBm). Below this critical level of SNR, the throughput
appears to drop-off quickly.
Moreover, PDR (or 1-FER) is greatly affected by frame
size. For frame size of 500-bytes, PDR drops off quickly from
1 at around -80 dBm to 0 at -86 dBm, for the RSS range of only
6 dBm. However, as for 20-bytes frame (shown in Table 2),
PDR drops off from 0 at around -81 dBm to 0.9 at around -
90 dBm, for a difference of around 9 dBm.
In addition, it is also evident that, the measured throughputs
are quite close to the expected results when the channel
condition is relatively good. However, when the channel
condition becomes poorer (RSS values below -84 dBm), the
measured throughputs are much higher than expected values.
One of the reasons is due to the retransmission effect
implemented by the wireless LAN adaptor. The retry limit for
short packet transmission is 7. A packet will be discarded only
when all 7 retransmissions fail. Most of the packets will get
through after a few retransmissions. This in turns increases the
probability of successful transmission of a packet, hence
improving throughput performance even when the channel
condition becomes poorer.
VI. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK
In this paper, a general throughput prediction model was
presented for IEEE 802.11b WLANs. Based on the theoretical
analysis and experimental study, the basic throughput
prediction model was then further improved to take into
consideration of IP fragmentation and channel FER.
Experiments were conducted to verify the accuracy of the
proposed models. Detailed experimental setup was presented
and the obtained experimental results were also analyzed in this
paper.
As for future work, throughput performance for multi-user
multi-hop scenario can be investigated to see how physical
model rather than protocol model is work and if implemented
in MAC together with information from Network layer can
help to improve throughput performance.
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