Experimental Evaluation of Techniques to Lower Spectrum Consumption in Wi-Red

TL;DR

This paper experimentally evaluates techniques to reduce spectrum consumption in Wi-Red, demonstrating that duplication avoidance mechanisms can significantly save bandwidth without impairing communication quality.

Contribution

It provides an experimental assessment of spectrum-saving mechanisms in Wi-Red, using post-analysis techniques on a simple testbed without firmware modifications.

Findings

Spectrum consumption decreases noticeably with duplication avoidance.

Communication quality remains unaffected by spectrum-saving techniques.

Additional savings possible with slight latency increases.

Abstract

Seamless redundancy layered atop Wi-Fi has been shown able to tangibly increase communication quality, hence offering industry-grade reliability. However, it also implies much higher network traffic, which is often unbearable as the wireless spectrum is a shared and scarce resource. To deal with this drawback the Wi-Red proposal includes suitable duplication avoidance mechanisms, which reduce spectrum consumption by preventing transmission on air of inessential frame duplicates. In this paper, the ability of such mechanisms to save wireless bandwidth is experimentally evaluated. To this purpose, specific post-analysis techniques have been defined, which permit to carry out such an assessment on a simple testbed that relies on plain redundancy and do not require any changes to the adapters' firmware. As results show, spectrum consumption decreases noticeably without communication quality is impaired. Further saving can be obtained if a slight worsening is tolerated for latencies.