Comprehensive analysis of IEEE 802.11ah for Wireless Communication Networks

IEEE 802.11ah is an approved amendment to IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) standard to support growing demand for machine-tomachine (M2M) applications. IEEE 802.11ah is intended for extended range and low power applications in the unlicensed sub 1 GHz band, including machine to machine communication and the internet of things. 802.11ah uses narrower contiguous channel bandwidths than IEEE 802.11n and IEEE 802.11ac to facilitate long range, low power communication at a lower data rate. Valid channel bandwidths are 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 MHz IEEE 802.11 ah standard was originally targeting high throughput applications. However, being able to have IP connectivity and the fact that Wi-Fi have already spread in every corner of the world, make this standard one of the most suitable technologies for next generation techniques. The paper evaluates the performance of IEEE 802.11ah and some of its features in various scenarios in this research work.