Performance of IEEE 802.11a Wireless LAN Standard over Frequency-Selective, Slowly Fading Nakagami Channels in a Pulsed Jamming Environment

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) are increasingly important in meeting the needs of the next generation broadband wireless communication systems for both commercial and military applications. In 1999, the Institute of the Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11a working group approved a standard for a 5 GHz band WLAN that supports a variable bit rate from 6 to 54 Mbps, and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) was chosen because of its well-known ability to avoid multipath effects while achieving high data rates by combining a high order sub-carrier modulation with a high rate convolutional code. This thesis investigates the performance of the OFDM based IEEE.802.11a WLAN standard in frequency-selective, slowly fading Nakagami channels in a pulsed-noise jamming environment. Contrary to expectations, the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) required to achieve a specific b P does not monotonically decrease when the bit rate decreases. Furthermore, the results show that the performance is improved significantly by adding convolutional coding with Viterbi decoding, and thus highlights the importance of forward error correction (FEC) coding to the performance of wireless communications systems.