MATLAB-Based PHY Simulators for Performance Study of the IEEE 802.11ah/af Systems

In the last decade, in order to realize reliable wireless communication link in a wide range of radio-frequency (RF) spectrum, the group of IEEE 802.11 technologies has been significantly expanded. In this paper, attention is devoted to the IEEE 802.11ah/af systems developed for Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) based communication with a support of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) concept in the sub-1GHz bands. Two MATLAB-based simulators are introduced to explore basic features of both systems on physical (PHY) layer level. A simple performance study of both systems under different channel conditions, evaluated in terms of bit and modulation error ratio (BER and MER), is provided to validate the simulators. The single-input single-output and multiple-input multiple-output (SISO and MIMO) technologies are also briefly compared. Simulation results show that systems IEEE 802.11ah and IEEE.802.11af can complement each other in various transmission scenarios and use cases.