MAC diversity in IEEE 802.11n MIMO networks

Opportunistic Routing (OR) is a novel routing technique for wireless mesh networks that exploits the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. OR combines frames from multiple receivers and therefore creates a form of Spatial Diversity, called MAC Diversity [1]. The gain from OR is especially high in networks where the majority of links has a high packet loss probability. The updated IEEE S02.11n standard improves the physical layer with the ability to use multiple transmit and receive antennas, i.e. Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO), and therefore already offers spatial diversity on the physical layer, i.e. called Physical Diversity, which improves the reliability of a wireless link by reducing its error rate. In this paper we quantify the gain from MAC diversity as utilized by OR in the presence of PHY diversity as provided by a MIMO system like S02.11n. We experimented with an IEEE S02.11n indoor testbed and analyzed the nature of packet losses. Our experiment results show negligible MAC diversity gains for both interference-prone 2.4 GHz and interference-free 5 GHz channels when using 802.11n. This is different to the observations made with single antenna systems based on 802.11b/g [1], as well as in initial studies with S02.11n [2].