The impact of channel bonding on 802.11n network management

The IEEE 802.11n standard allows wireless devices to op-erate on 40MHz-width channels by doubling their channel width from standard 20MHz channels, a concept called chan-nel bonding. Increasing channel width should increase band-width, but it comes at the cost of decreased transmission range and greater susceptibility to interference. However, with the incorporation of MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) technology in 802.11n, devices can now exploit the increased transmission rates from wider channels at a re-duced sacrifice to signal quality and range. The goal of our work is to understand the characteristics of channel bonding in 802.11n networks and the factors that influence that be-havior to ultimately be able to predict behavior so that net-work performance is maximized. We discuss the impact of channel bonding choices as well as the effects of both co-channel and adjacent channel interference on network per-formance. We discover that intelligent channel bonding de-cisions rely not only on a link’s signal quality, but also on the strength of neighboring links and their physical rates. 1