The 2015 International Workshop on Wireless Network Measurements and Experimentation

Performance Measurement and Analysis of Long

Range Wi-Fi Network for Over-the-Sea
Communication
Siddharth Unni Dhanesh Raj Kalyan Sasidhar Sethuraman Rao
Amrita Center for Wireless Networks and Applications, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, Kerala, India
Email: {siddharthunni2111@gmail.com}, {dhaneshraj, kalyansasidhar, sethuramanrao}@am.amrita.edu

Abstract—Currently, Indian fishermen use handheld radios or shore over long-range Wi-Fi backhaul links. LR Wi-Fi is
satellite phones for offshore communication. While the former based on 802.11n, however, uses TDMA MAC instead of
is based on broadcast communication with its range limited CSMA/CA. There are several vendors that manufacture long
by Line-of-Sight, the latter is expensive. Therefore, lack of
connectivity-at-sea is a huge problem for many Indian fishermen. distance 802.11 equipment (Ubiquiti, MikroTik, etc.), with
Hence, this work prescribes a hierarchical point-to-multi-point their proprietary MAC protocols. The experiments in this paper
backhaul network using long range (LR) Wi-Fi technology. It is are conducted using Ubiquiti equipment. To summarize, the
a multi-hop network consisting of base stations and clusters of objective of this paper is to measure and analyze network level
boats. Each boat-cluster forms a wireless mesh access network. statistics of a LR Wi-Fi network over the sea consisting of an
A field-trial was conducted at sea to measure and analyze the
coverage and connectivity of the P2mP LR Wi-Fi backhaul net- onshore base station and offshore mobile units. Through our
work, using commercially available 5 GHz base stations, antennas empirical work, we aim to answer some of the key questions
and customer premises equipment (CPE). Several parameters such as:
such as transmission power level, mechanical antenna tilt at the 1) What is the maximum range of base station?
base station and channel bandwidth were fine-tuned to maximize
the range. This paper discusses the observations and the results 2) How does received signal strength vary with the me-
obtained. chanical tilt of antenna?
Index Terms—Bridge mode, Channel Bandwidth, Mechanical 3) What is the relationship between channel bandwidth and
Tilt, Received Signal Strength Index, Link Level Parameters signal strength?
4) How does the quality of wireless link vary with distance?
I. I NTRODUCTION
5) What is the variation of Tx-Rx data rate with distance?
It is apparent that fishing is one of the largest sources of The remainder of this report is structured as follows. In
occupation in India. While the revenue generated from fishing Section 2, the relevant and related work is discussed. Section
is in the order of crores, it involves the fishermen facing 3 provides the description of System Design and System
threats and putting their lives at risk. Moreover, fishing is Architecture. Section 4 explains the Experimental Setup and
performed for distances beyond 100 km. Lack of cellular net- Methodology in depth. This is followed by Section 5 which
work coverage at such distances has led to the use of handheld talks about Measurement Analysis and comparison. The work
radios and satellite phones [1]. Despite easy installations and is concluded in Section 6.
delivering good performance, cost factor hinders their usage
for fishermen. II. R ELATED W ORK
Traditional IEEE 802.11 technology does not support long A considerable amount of research has been performed in
distance communications due to CSMA and small MAC-level long distance 802.11 links. However, not much work has been
AckTimeOut value [2]. A TDMA protocol with modified RTT carried out in their implementation over the sea.
and ACK times has been introduced in [4] for long distances.
This technology termed Long Range Wi-Fi (LR Wi-Fi) has One such work is performed in [4] where eight different long
been implemented in [3] [5] for different applications. In this distance links were setup, ranging from 1km to 37km. Seven
paper, we propose to use LR Wi-Fi and evaluate its efficacy of the links were in the Digital Gangetic Plains (DGP) testbed
in providing Point to Multi Point (P2MP) connection over and one was in the Ashwini Project deployment. The main
long distances in the sea. The P2MP network consists of a objectives of this paper was to obtain per-packet information
base station on shore and clusters of boats offshore. This such as Received Signal Strength of the packets received,
work primarily sets up a network architecture between the energy level before packet reception, the modulation used for
static base station and the mobile boats and evaluates LR the packet, MAC packet type and sub-type, and MAC sequence
Wi-Fi communication link. The network consisted of COTS number information.
base station and clients. The proposed architecture consists Another such work is a predecessor of the above work, that
of clusters of boats connected to the base station at the has implemented the Digital Gangetic Plains (DGP) testbed

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 The 2015 International Workshop on Wireless Network Measurements and Experimentation

[5]. The longest link setup between two points in the network
is about 80km. The testbed was setup in rural area, with IIT-
Kanpur as the center of origin. The authors have discussed
the physical layer issues, MAC layer issues, and Routing and
Reconfigurability.
M. Zennaro, C. Fonda, et al., 2008 [6] proposed the im-
plementation of a 162km wireless link in Malawi, Africa.
Their objective was to provide a long wireless link for rural Fig. 2. (a). Ubiquiti Rocket M5 Base Station. (b). Ubiquiti airMAX Sector
telemedicine. The link connects the University of Malawi Antenna AM-5G19-120. (c). Ubiquiti NanoStation M5 CPE
College of Medicine in Blantyre with the Mangochi Hospital
as research institutions in the cities of Blantyre, Zomba and
Mangochi. The Sector Antenna utilizes airMAX technology. Unlike
Rob Flickenger, et al., 2008 [7] have presented a successful standard Wi-Fi protocol, Ubiquiti’s TDMA airMAX proto-
279km wireless link in Venezeula, and a permanent 133km test col allows each client to send and receive data using pre-
network in northern Italy for research purposes. The 279km designated time slots scheduled by an intelligent AP controller,
link runs from Pico del Aguila to El Baul and provides line- which is the Rocket M5. The antenna can support up to 100
of-sight communication. The authors used Linksys WRT54G clients (CPEs). In the experiments conducted, the wireless
wireless router and an assembled high gain directional antenna. mode of Rocket M5 is set as Access Point, and that of
NanoStation M5 is set as Station. The devices run on airOS,
Our work includes a novel architecture of over the sea com- a configuration interface provided by Ubiquiti Networks.
munication network to provide seamless and reliable com- Ubiquiti airOS and Ubiquiti airView are the software tools
munication to the fishermen when they are in sea over long used in this network. The airOS is the configuration inter-
distance. The next section describes the system design and face/operating system running on the Ubiquiti Rocket M5
system architecture. and Ubiquiti NanoStation M5. Various parameters such as
Output power, Antenna Gain, Frequency, Channel to be used,
III. S YSTEM D ESIGN
Channel Width to name a few, can be varied using airOS. In
This section provides a description of the design of the the main screen of airOS, information such as Device Name,
system and explains its architecture. The work presented in airOS version, Wireless Mode, Network SSID, Frequency that
this paper is practically implemented by use of long range is being used currently, channel width, channel number and
transceiver equipment from a vendor named Ubiquiti. Three MAC ID of the device are displayed. The airView Spectrum
different devices are used, namely, Ubiquiti Rocket M5, Analyzer is used to analyze the noise environment of radio
Ubiquiti airMAX Sector Antenna AM-5G19-120, and Ubiquiti spectrum and intelligently select the optimal frequency to
NanoStation M5. The technical information of these devices install a Point-to-Point airMAX link.
is given in Fig. 1.
A. Network Topology
Fig. 3 shows the topology for over the sea network. The

Fig. 3. Topology of the proposed network

Internet Core Network, Laptop with USB Data Card, and

Fig. 1. Technical Information of the devices used Ubiquiti Rocket M5 Base Station with Sector Antenna are on

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 The 2015 International Workshop on Wireless Network Measurements and Experimentation

the shore. Ubiquiti NanoStation M5 CPE, Access Point, and IV. E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP AND M ETHODOLOGY
Mobile Phone/Laptop are on the boat side (fishing trawler). A In this section, the experimental setup of over the sea
Cisco Linksys E2500 Access Point was used. communication network is discussed in detail. The experiment
At every component, both uplink and downlink transmission was conducted from Parayakadavu beach, a fishing village in
takes place. Hence the two sided arrows. From the experiments the Kollam district, in Kerala. The experimental setup is shown
we conducted, it was found that the link between BS and CPE in Fig. 5. The Rocket M5 base station along with the sector
is approximately 18 km (subject to environmental conditions antenna was installed on the terrace of a 16 storey building
and sources of interference). It means the fishermen can get situated on the beach at a height of approximately 56 metres.
internet connectivity up to 18 km into the sea. However the The Nanostation M5 CPE with the integrated antenna was
range is not limited to 18 km. Our research continues with the mounted at a height of about 9 metres from the water surface
prime objective being the range extension of wireless link that on the boat’s deck. The back end connection of the base station
we deployed.

B. Network Architecture
The proposed architecture consists of clusters of boats con-
nected to the base station at the shore over LR Wi-Fi backhaul
links. Long-range Wi-Fi is based on 802.11n, however, uses
TDMA MAC instead of CSMA/CA. Several vendors have
FCC compliant products based on this technology with several
real world deployments. Most of the deployments are Fixed
Wireless deployments (WISP) on land though. Both point-to-
point and point-to-multi-point links have been deployed.
The base station at the shore would provide a point-to-
multipoint network to the customer premises equipment (CPE)
on the boats. The CPE will be connected to an access node,
say, a wireless access point (AP), which will provide the access Fig. 5. Experimental Setup
network to the user equipment (UE) such as smart phones,
tablets, laptops, etc. that are wireless enabled. The boats within is the laptop that is connected to internet via D-Link USB
each cluster will be interconnected as a wireless mesh network. Data Card. The long distance wireless link is between Sector
While the backhaul Wi-Fi network operates at 5.8 GHz, the Antenna connected to Rocket M5 and NanoStations, which
access Wi-Fi networks could operate at 2.4 GHz. In order to forms a Point-to-multiPoint link (PtmP). The distance of the
increase the range, one of the boats at the edge of a cluster link specified by the vendor is around 20 km. It is subject
could in turn provide yet another point to multipoint long- to change with the environmental conditions and interference
range Wi-Fi link by acting as a base station. Fig. 4 shows the levels. It is not necessary that all boats have to be equipped
network architecture. The next section describes the practical with a NanoStation. If the boats travel in a cluster, one of
the boats can be installed with NanoStation and access point,
and the nearby boats will get signal reception from the access
point. It should be reminded that ”by boats getting signals”,
it means the phones possessed by fishermen in the boats get
signals through Wi-Fi network of the access point. The cluster
based network can also be named as Ad hoc Mesh network.
A. Hardware and Software Setup
The Ubiquiti Rocket M5 Base Station with Sector Antenna
is pole mounted on top of the building. In the boat side, the
Ubiquiti NanoStation M5 CPE is pole mounted. It is ensured
that a clear line-of-sight path always exists between BS and
CPE, so as to provide seamless and reliable communication to
fishermen. On the shore, a laptop is connected to D-Link USB
Data Card to provide internet access to the laptop. The laptop
is connected to a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) adapter by an
Fig. 4. Architecture of the proposed network ethernet cable. The Rocket M5 cannot be connected directly to
the laptop since the power required by Rocket M5 is different
implementation of the system architecture, experimental setup from that provided by the ethernet port of laptop. Rocket M5
and methodology. requires a current of 1A which is provided by the PoE adapter.

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The PoE adapter has to RJ-45 ports: one for connecting to of CPE; the variation of signal strength with distance, how
laptop, another for connecting to Rocket M5. Rocket M5 itself it varies- is it a steep variation due to some interference
does not have any antenna. It is externally connected to Sector or gradual variation with distance, and the effect of varying
Antenna through two Coaxial cables, one for transmission, signal strength in Tx/Rx rate of CPE. We were able to obtain
another for reception. The internet access provided by the D- successful connectivity till 17.7 km in the sea. The signal
Link Data Card is shared with the ethernet port of laptop. strength at 17.7 km was -91 dBm. The noise floor was -93
Therefore the Rocket M5 transmits internet packets to sector dBm. At -91 dBm, the Tx/Rx rate was 1.7/1.625 Mbps. This
antenna which wirelessly transmits the same. The NanoStation results in around 400 KBps of total data transfer rate, which
M5 which has established a wireless connection with Rocket is more than adequate to stream a video seamlessly.
M5, receives internet packets from Rocket M5, and forwards
C. Measurement Methodology
the packets to the Cisco LinkSys E2500 Access Point (AP).
This AP provides 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network on the There are two broad metrics we took into consideration for
boat. The fishermen, using their mobile phones equipped with our experiments:
Wi-Fi, connect to AP, thereby getting access to internet. Fig. 6 1) Received Signal Strength
2) Distance
Based on these metrics, the following parameters were ob-
served:
• The relationship of mechanical tilt of sector antenna
and signal strength for various distances: We conducted
experiments by varying the mechanical tilt of sector
antenna at tilt degrees of 20 to -2.50 . We found that at
a tilt of -1.50 , the received signal strength of CPE was
higher than that at the remaining tilt degrees. The analysis
is carried out in the next section.
• The relationship of wireless link quality and Client Con-
nection Quality (CCQ) with distance: We found that the
link quality and CCQ were pretty good till connectivity
was lost.
• The relationship of channel bandwidth of the propagated
Fig. 6. The devices installed in the boat and their connections
signal and signal strength at different distances: We
shows the devices that will be installed in the boat, and their conducted experiments of varying channel bandwidth of
connections. the signals at 5 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHz. We found
that for signals with bandwidth of 5MHz, the received
B. Real-time Network Setup signal strength of CPE was higher than other bandwidths,
In our practical deployment of over the sea scenario, a Point- for the same distance.
to-multiPoint link is setup. We traveled along Arabian Sea on • The relationship of Tx-Rx Data Rate with distance:
a fishing boat in which the CPE was installed. As we sailed We had just over 1 Mbps Tx/Rx data rate till we lost
across the ocean we had to frequently align the CPE in order to connectivity.
maintain a Line-Of-Sight path between the sector antenna and Detailed analysis and graphs of the above measurements are
CPE. A 20m Cat6 UTP ethernet cable was connected to the discussed in the following section.
CPE, and its other end ran all the way inside the wheel house
V. M EASUREMENT A NALYSIS
(cabin) of the boat. It was connected to the PoE which supplies
an output current of 0.5A to the CPE. The other RJ-45 port of This section covers the measurements taken in the experi-
the PoE was connected to the Cisco LinkSys E2500 Access ments and their analysis. As discussed in the previous section,
Point, which provided 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. Any Wi- five different relationships are made from the experiments.
Fi supported mobile phone or laptop could be connected to They are:
AP. • Received Signal Strength of NSM5 CPE (RSS) vs Dis-
For our experimental purposes we connected two mobile tance at Antenna Tilts
phones and two laptops to the AP via Wi-Fi. Internet data • Air Quality and CCQ vs Distance
packets were transmitted from BS to CPE, thereby providing • Received Signal Strength of NSM5 CPE (RSS) vs An-
internet access to the mobile phones and laptops connected to tenna Tilt at 5 MHz
AP. In the laptop, we monitored the performance using the • Received Signal Strength of NSM5 CPE (RSS) vs Chan-
airOS configuration interface. We recorded the screen using a nel Bandwidth
third-party software called Corel Screen Capture and recorded • Tx-Rx data rate vs Distance
the laptop screen while we were noting down the readings. Our 1) Received Signal Strength of NSM5 CPE (RSS) vs Dis-
entire attention revolved around the received signal strength tance at Antenna Tilts: Fig. 7 shows the graph of RSSI vs

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Fig. 7. RSSI vs Distance at various Antenna Tilts Fig. 8. airMAX Quality and CCQ vs Distance

Distance at various antenna tilts. It is a known fact that 3) Received Signal Strength of NSM5 CPE (RSS) vs
as channel width decreases the throughput decreases and Antenna Tilt at 5 MHz: Since we took most of the
communication range increases. Since our emphasis was
on determining the maximum range of the network, we
set the channel bandwidth to the lowest possible value,
i.e., 5 MHz. The graph shows different lines which are
channel bandwidths, and its impact on RSSI of CPE
at varied distances. At -1.50 , the RSSI was found to
be the highest, among other tilt degrees. This means
that at -1.50 , the CPE is exactly in the sector of the
BS sector antenna. We further observed that even for
a slight change of ±0.50 there is a significant decrease
in RSSI. Initially, the base station antenna was set up
with a mechanical up-tilt of 20 . This was to compensate
for the built-in electrical down-tilt of 20 . We wanted to
optimize for a distance of 10 km from the base station.
With the antenna at a height of 56 metres, this gave us Fig. 9. RSSI vs Antenna Tilt at 5 MHz
an angle of incidence of
tan−1 (56/10000) = 0.3210 (1) readings keeping the channel bandwidth at 5 MHz,
we decided to draw a relationship between RSSI and
Since this is close to zero, we wanted to start with Antenna Tilt at 5 MHz channel bandwidth. This set
an initial mechanical up-tilt of 20 and then vary it of readings were taken at approximately 15 km from
in increments or decrements of 0.50 . The maximum BS. The graph is as explained earlier. We observed
distance we could get the signal was 17.7 km at tilt a maximum RSSI of -68 dBm at -1.50 . It started to
degrees of -1.50 , and -20 . decline as we changed the tilt degrees to -10 , 00 , 10
and 20 . This means that at -1.50 , the CPE is exactly in
2) airMAX Quality and CCQ vs Distance: the sector of the BS sector antenna.
CCQ- Wireless Client Connection Quality: The level
is based on a percentage value for which 100% 4) Received Signal Strength of NSM5 CPE (RSS) vs
corresponds to a perfect link state. airMAX Quality Channel Bandwidth: Fig. 10 shows the variation of
(AMQ) is based on the number of retries and the quality RSSI with different channel bandwidths of 5 MHz, 10
of the physical link. Fig. 8 shows the relationship of MHz and 20 MHz. We could not measure the RSSI
airMAX quality and CCQ with distance. We observed for all the channel bandwidths for all distances due to
that the CCQ remained unchanged irrespective of logistics issues. We stopped the boat at 11 km and 15
increased distance, upto 17 km. The quality of km, changed the channel bandwidth and plotted the
connection was good throughout, and deteriorated observation. At 11 km, the result is as expected. As
slightly towards the end. The behavior of airMAX link channel bandwidth increases, RSSI decreases. At 15
quality is as expected; it reduced as distance increased. km, when we increased the bandwidth from 10 MHz to
20 MHz, to our surprise, the RSSI value increased by

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strength at 16 km was -80 dBm to -82 dBm.

VI. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
In this research, an over the sea network architecture was
designed to provide seamless and reliable long distance com-
munication to the fishermen when they are at sea. To determine
the characteristics of long distance link, various measurements
were taken by conducting different experiments at different
distances in the sea. We observed that to obtain the best
performance at the longest link, i.e., at 17.7 km, the channel
width of the transmitted signal should be set to 5 MHz and
mechanical downtilt of sector antenna should be set to -1.50 .
After conducting further experiments and setting up stable
links, fishermen can access internet using their Wi-Fi equipped
Fig. 10. RSSI vs Channel Bandwidth
mobile phones, through which they can obtain information
about weather forecast, GPS coordinates, current market rates
about 5 dBm. This observation is still unexplained. It of fishing, broadcast emergency SOS in case of boat collision
is unclear if it is the result of some technical glitch or or medical emergency, and contact border officials while
a sudden variation in signal characteristics. To answer crossing borders.
this question, we have to conduct more field trials and As for the future work, automatic alignment of the antennas
analyze the behavior of signal with varying channel using micro-controller driven rotary platform can be imple-
bandwidth. mented. For detailed analysis of link characteristics, the similar
experiments can be conducted using 2.4 GHz equipment,
5) Tx-Rx data rate vs Distance: Fig. 11 shows the variation consequently, a comparative study can be performed with the
of Tx and Rx data rate with distance. We could not 5 GHz experiments. Also, to answer the question of range
collect the Tx-Rx data rate values for the entire 18 extension, a BS can be installed in the boat, which essentially
kms due to logistics issues. The plot of the readings forms a multihop network.
we could take, is shown in Fig. 11. At 20 antenna tilt, VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
the highest Tx data rate was around 3.25 Mbps at 16.9
We are immensely grateful to our beloved Chancellor Shri.
km. The highest Rx data rate was around 4.25 Mbps at
(Dr) Mata Amritanandamayi Devi for her inspiration and
16.9 km. After that the Tx and Rx data rate were pretty
motivation. This project is partly funded by a grant from In-
much the same for the remaining distances.
formation Technology Research Agency (ITRA), Department
of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of
India.
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