Evaluation of a Low-Cost IEEE 802.11n MIMO Testbed

This paper presents and evaluates a configurable and inexpensive MIMO mesh network platform based on IEEE 802.11n and open source software for research purposes. The requirements on such a research testbed are twofold. On the one hand a highly configurable solution is desirable where the researcher is able to make modifications on each layer of the hard- and software solution. On the other hand to make sound conclusions on the performance of protocols for mesh networks a large-scale testbed consisting of hundreds of nodes is necessary. Therefore, a single mesh node has to be inexpensive. Thus a tradeoff between these two opposed targets has to be made.