Performance evaluation of IEEE 802.11ah systems

In 2010 IEEE 802.11ah working group has started with work on designing their first standard in sub-GHz spectrum, with the goal to bring a WLAN standard with extended range, which, among other things, could provide communication services in the area of IoT applications. Enhancements of achievable communication range in IEEE 802.11ah are results of modifications done on physical and MAC layer. In this paper we examine performance of IEEE 802.11ah systems in terms of achievable range and bit error rate (BER) of the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) achieving the longest range. In order to examine fading effect on achievable range, we have modeled and compared scenarios with and without fading, in urban environment, where no techniques for fading mitigation are implemented.