Networking capabilities of IEEE 802.11s and IEEE 802.11ah systems

Abstract

Internet of Things was considered a new technology couple of years ago but with the speed at which technologies are improving and being implemented, we can see IoT devices and platforms already in market. But sadly, there is still no concensus on how these devices would unanimously commmunicate with each other. Thankfully IEEE 802.11ah brings up a unanimous and unique way for all these devices to communicate and coexist on lower 2 layers of OSI model. 802.11ah can communicate with other networking protocols as well and interestingly, dedicated Application layer protocols for IoT (COAP) are also being implemented these days. IEEE 802.11ah is simulated in this thesis and also the relaying option from the draft is implemented. IEEE 802.11s mesh on the other hand is rather old technology but still serves the purpose really well and is implemented in various situations. Because of nice and detailed networking infrastructure of IEEE 802.11s mesh, this protocol is studied and simulated in this thesis. However, to make the scenario closer to IoT use case, only stationary devices are used and hence Proactive networking protocols of Mesh are deemed better suited. We analyse the networking bits of both these technologies in this thesis to see if they can coexist and cooperate. In the end, we mention the performance of these technologies and propose some future enhancements.