Investigating the impact of human activity on the performance of wireless networks — An experimental approach

Abstract

In this paper, we are interested in evaluating the performance of indoor wireless networks in LOS and NLOS conditions. We first provide a thorough analysis of received signal strength indicator (RSSI) measurements obtained in indoor experiments. We aim to better understand the temporal and spatial correlations of RSSI values. Moreover, we analyze in detail the stability of radio links over time. We show that human activity has a significant impact on the performance of wireless networks and that RSSI is not always a robust indicator for the radio link quality. Based on our results, we then propose a time-varying simulation model to reproduce the RSSI variability as observed in our experiments. We argue that this model results in more realistic and accurate RSSI values to be used in simulation.