First VoWLAN field tests

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Trevor Collins
Curious cows. A hazard that distinguishes our field testing from our lab based testing.

Curious cows. A hazard that distinguishes our field testing from our lab based testing.

Today we did our first set of antenna tests as part of the JISC funded Portable VoWLAN project. We went out into the wilds of Old Wolverton and set up a pair of Linksys WRT 54GL routers at a distance of 100 meters in the morning and then a distance of 1.3 kilometers in the afternoon, to compare the performance of a range of antenna.

We used the iperf program to identify the (tcp) bandwidth and (udp) jitter values from a 60 second test. Here’s a quick summary of the findings…

100 meters: Base server / far client (i.e. from far to base)

Distance Base ant. Far ant. Bandwidth (Mbits/s) Jitter (ms)
100 m Rubber duck Rubber duck 13.650 0.113
100 m 8dB Omni Rubber duck 20.982 0.062
100 m 8dB Omni 14dB Panel 20.631 0.022
100 m 14dB Panel 14dB Panel 20.801 0.271

 

100 meters: Far server – base client (i.e. from base to far)

Distance Base ant. Far ant. Bandwidth (Mbits/s) Jitter (ms)
100 m Rubber duck Rubber duck 11.563 2.158
100 m 8dB Omni Rubber duck 19.175 0.683
100 m 8dB Omni 14dB Panel 21.655 0.144
100 m 14dB Panel 14dB Panel 21.176 0.034

 

1.3 kilometers: Base server / far client (i.e. from far to base)

Distance Base ant. Far ant. Bandwidth (Mbits/s) Jitter (ms)
1.3 km 14dB Panel 14dB Panel 10.463 0.394
1.3 km Yagi 14dB Panel 10.872 2.136

 

1.3 kilometers: Far server – base client (i.e. from base to far)

Distance Base ant. Far ant. Bandwidth (Mbits/s) Jitter (ms)
1.3 km 14dB Panel 14dB Panel 10.157 0.139
1.3 km Yagi 14dB Panel 10.393 0.234

 

…from these results we can conclude that from this selection we should use 14dB Panel or 8dB Omni antennas.

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