Journal of Communications and Networks

The Korean Institute of Commucations and Information Sciences (한국통신학회)
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Measurement and Comparison of Wi-Fi and Super Wi-Fi Indoor Propagation Characteristics in a Multi-Floored Building

  • Hwang, Gyumin (Sysmate, Inc.) ;
  • Shin, Kyubo (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)) ;
  • Park, Sanghyeok (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)) ;
  • Kim, Hyoil (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST))
  • Received : 2015.01.12
  • Accepted : 2015.09.07
  • Published : 2016.06.30
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Abstract

Super Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi-like service exploiting TV white space (WS) which is expected to achieve larger coverage than today's Wi-Fi thanks to its superior propagation characteristics. Super Wi-Fi has been materialized as an international standard, IEEE 802.11af, targeting indoor and outdoor applications, and is undergoing worldwide field tests. This paper demonstrates the true potential of indoor Super Wi-Fi, by experimentally comparing the signal propagation characteristics of Super Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi in the same indoor environment. Specifically, we measured the wall and floor attenuation factors and the path-loss distribution at 770MHz, 2.401 GHz, and 5.540 GHz, and predicted the downlink capacity of Wi-Fi and Super Wi-Fi. The experimental results have revealed that TVWS signals can penetrate up to two floors above and below, whereas Wi-Fi signals experience significant path loss even through a single floor. It has been also shown that Super Wi-Fi mitigates shaded regions of Wi-Fi by providing almost-homogeneous data rates within its coverage, performs comparable to Wi-Fi utilizing less bandwidth, and always achieves better spectral efficiency than Wi-Fi. The observed phenomena imply that Super Wi-Fi is suitable for indoor applications and has the potential of extending horizontal and vertical coverage of today's Wi-Fi.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

Grant : Research on Near-Zero Latency Network for 5G Immersive Service

Supported by : National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), IITP

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