Empirical analysis of measured 802.11 Receive Signal Strength Values using various Atheros based Mini-PCI cards

In this paper the accuracy and distribution of measured 802.11 Receive Signal Strength values will be analysed using three different Atheros based cards. The analysis is performed using empirical methods, e.g., sample mean and Empirical Cumulative Distribution Functions, in order to demonstrate the dependency of the accuracy of Receive Signal Strength values on the used chipset and on the number of captured frames to derive the sample mean with a certain probability. A comprehensive section on the experimental environment ensures a possible repeatability of the measurements which underlines the complexity of the performed analysis at the same time.