Design and Characterization of a Full-Duplex Multiantenna System for WiFi Networks

TLDR

In this paper, we present an experiment‑ and simulation‑based study to evaluate the use of full duplex (FD) as a potential mode in practical IEEE 802.11 networks. We designed a 20‑MHz multi‑antenna OFDM FD physical layer and a backward‑compatible FD MAC protocol to enable the study. Our experiments and simulations show that multi‑antenna FD yields higher ergodic throughput than equivalent HD systems at practical SNRs, and the FD MAC nearly doubles throughput in multinode single‑AP networks, indicating substantial benefits for future WiFi standards.

Abstract

In this paper, we present an experiment- and simulation-based study to evaluate the use of full duplex (FD) as a potential mode in practical IEEE 802.11 networks. To enable the study, we designed a 20-MHz multiantenna orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) FD physical layer and an FD media access control (MAC) protocol, which is backward compatible with current 802.11. Our extensive over-the-air experiments, simulations, and analysis demonstrate the following two results. First, the use of multiple antennas at the physical layer leads to a higher ergodic throughput than its hardware-equivalent multiantenna half-duplex (HD) counterparts for SNRs above the median SNR encountered in practical WiFi deployments. Second, the proposed MAC translates the physical layer rate gain into near doubling of throughput for multinode single-AP networks. The two results allow us to conclude that there are potentially significant benefits gained from including an FD mode in future WiFi standards.