Design and Characterization of a Full-duplex Multi-antenna System for WiFi networks

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a multi-antenna full-duplex WiFi system can nearly double throughput compared to traditional half-duplex systems, showing significant potential for future WiFi standards.

Contribution

The paper introduces a practical multi-antenna full-duplex physical layer and MAC protocol compatible with IEEE 802.11, validated through extensive experiments and simulations.

Findings

Multi-antenna full-duplex achieves higher ergodic throughput than half-duplex at practical SNRs.

The proposed MAC protocol nearly doubles throughput in multi-node single-AP networks.

Full-duplex mode offers significant benefits for future WiFi standards.

Abstract

In this paper, we present an experimental and simulation based study to evaluate the use of full-duplex as a mode in practical IEEE 802.11 networks. To enable the study, we designed a 20 MHz multi-antenna OFDM full-duplex physical layer and a full-duplex capable 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 multi-antenna half-duplex 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 multi-node single-AP networks. The two combined results allow us to conclude that there are potentially significant benefits gained from including a full-duplex mode in future WiFi standards.