Measurement setup for automatized baselining of WLAN network performance

WLAN technology defined by the IEEE 802.11 standard family delivers ever increasing raw data rates with each new standard. However, raw data rate does not reflect real-world performance for end users. This paper proposes an automated setup to conduct performance measurements for WLAN APs in consideration of network performance metrics. The main objective is to create a simple baseline for benchmarking to find the best among the devices. The setup is able to measure data rate, RSSI and jitter in WLAN uplink and downlink. It is a repeatable and reliable mechanism, which can be further extended to different scenarios and use-cases. We also present and discuss the preliminary numerical results. This is only the first step toward a fully automated setup in an anechoic chamber.