IEEE 802.11ac Vs IEEE 802.11n: Throughput Comparison in Multiple Indoor Environments

IEEE 802.11ac is a fifth generation WiFi standard that has many advanced features than the current widely used IEEE 802.11n. In this paper, we perform experiments in two real indoor environments (that possess interference and have different multipath characteristics) to quantify the gain in average throughput provided by IEEE 802.11ac compared to IEEE 802.11n. Our experimental results show that in an environment with less multipath effect, IEEE 802.11ac provides 51% and 126% gain compared to IEEE 802.11n at a distance of 5m and 18.5m from the wireless router, respectively. Similarly, in an environment with high multipath effect, IEEE 802.11ac provides gain of 21% and 32% compared to IEEE 802.11n at a distance of 1m and 18.5m from the wireless router, respectively. We conclude that IEEE 802.11ac can effectively handle interference caused by other IEEE 802.11n (5GHz) sources and provides higher throughput than IEEE 802.11n.