Empirical Analysis of Bi-directional Wi-Fi Network Performance on Mobile Robots in Indoor Environments

TL;DR

This study empirically evaluates Wi-Fi network performance for mobile robots in indoor environments, analyzing metrics like throughput and delay across different frequencies and access point placements to inform reliable robotic communication.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for measuring Wi-Fi performance in mobile robots, providing experimental insights into bidirectional network behavior in indoor settings.

Findings

Wi-Fi performance varies significantly between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels.

Access point placement impacts network metrics such as delay and throughput.

The framework is applicable to vehicular and field robotics for network evaluation.

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework to measure the important metrics (throughput, delay, packet retransmits, signal strength, etc.) to determine Wi-Fi network performance of mobile robots supported by the Robot Operating Systems (ROS) middleware. We analyze the bidirectional network performance of mobile robots through an experimental setup in an indoor environment, where a mobile robot is communicating vital sensor data such as video streaming from the camera(s) and LiDAR scan values to a command station while it navigates an indoor environment through teleoperated velocity commands received from the command station. The experiments evaluate the performance under 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels with different placement of Access Points (AP) with up to two network devices on each side. The framework is generalizable to vehicular network evaluation and the discussions and insights from this study apply to the field robotics community, where the wireless network plays a key role in enabling the success of robotic missions in real-world environments.