Multi-hop coverage extension of an IEEE 802.11b WLAN in a corporate environment

In this paper, we propose to extend the coverage of IEEE 802.11b cells in indoor environments thanks to the multihop concept. By adding some relay nodes to the cell, that do not need to be connected to the wired network, it is shown that we can overcome the rapidly decreasing signal strength in an office environment, reduce the number of dead spots, and so drastically reduce the number of access pointsper unit area. MonteCarlo simulation results are provided for a practical corporate environment. In the presented scenario, the expected covered area is tripled thanks to relay nodes. Simulations also show a cellular capacity increase (CCI) thanks to link adaptation (LA) exceeding 6. A general method for the computation of the carrier to interference ratio (CIR) in a multi-hop cloud is presented. A modelization of the joint probability density function (pdf) related to the received power and the CIRs for each physical (PHY) modes is also proposed.