Investigating the Effect of Number of Users on Signal Strength Level and Throughput for Wi-Fi System

Abstract

In this study, the effect of the number of users in a Wi-Fi access point on signal strength and throughput is investigated. For this purpose, measurement environment was set as including one Wi-Fi access point, needed measurement devices and 70 users. The number of users was increased as per user/per second. Each user was asked to download the same 300 MB data file from the certain WEB page. In the meanwhile, the signal strength was measured using android based "Wi-Fi Analyzer" application and the data traffic on the Wi-Fi modem was tracked. The changes in Wi-Fi channel usage and channels' signal strengths depending on the increment in the number of users were investigated. The number of users and throughput rates were validated with the data obtained from Ondokuz Mayis University IT Department. It is seen from the results that the signal strength may vary between -80 dBm and -46 dBm depending on the number of users. The sudden changes have occurred in throughput rates as a result of the number of users connected to the access point at the same time. It is also determined from the measurement results that the maximum throughput is 20.26 Mbps while the mean is 10.07 Mbps, and the maximum allowable number of users is 64.