HIATus: Hidden Interference-Aware Transmission Bandwidth Adjustment in IEEE 802.11ac WLANs

Abstract

In the IEEE 802.11ac wide bandwidth operation, interference may exist only on secondary channels. In particular, if the interference is not sensed at the transmitter, i.e., the interference is hidden, performance can be severely degraded. This problem cannot be resolved with RTS/CTS if the hidden interference is also not sensed at the receiver. We propose a hidden interference-aware bandwidth adjustment (<italic>HIATus</italic>)to resolve the problem, which uses error statistics to detect the hidden interference and adjusts transmission bandwidth to avoid hidden interference on the secondary channel. We evaluate the feasibility of <italic>HIATus</italic> with extensive measurement and analysis. When hidden interference exists on the secondary channel, <italic>HIATus</italic> is expected to achieve up to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation= LaTeX >$14.4\\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> higher throughput compared with the baseline 802.11ac.