GR-WiFi: A GNU Radio based WiFi Platform with Single-User and Multi-User MIMO Capability

TL;DR

GR-WiFi is an open-source SDR platform enabling single-user and multi-user MIMO WiFi transmissions, supporting modern standards and traffic types, evaluated via simulations and real-world tests.

Contribution

It introduces GR-WiFi, the first open-source platform supporting multi-user MIMO WiFi based on 802.11n/ac standards with extensive experimental validation.

Findings

Supports parallel data streams for multiple users

Enables coexistence of different WiFi traffic types

Demonstrates effective performance in simulations and real-world tests

Abstract

Since its first release, WiFi has been highly successful in providing wireless local area networks. The ever-evolving IEEE 802.11 standards continue to add new features to keep up with the trend of increasing numbers of mobile devices and the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Unfortunately, the lack of open-source IEEE 802.11 testbeds in the community limits the development and performance evaluation of those new features. Motivated by an existing popular open-source software-defined radio (SDR) package for single-user single-stream transmission based on the IEEE 802.11/a/g/p standard, in this paper we present GR-WiFi, an open-source package for single-user and multi-user multi-input multi-output (MIMO) transmissions based on 802.11n and 802.11ac standards. The distinct features of GR-WiFi include the support of parallel data streams to single or multiple users, and the compatible preamble processing to allow the co-existence of conventional, high-throughput (HT) and very-high-throughput (VHT) traffics. The performance of GR-WiFi is evaluated through both extensive simulation and real-world experiments.