Collecting Broken Frames: Error Statistics in 802.11b/g Links

Abstract

We present a measurement method that allows to capture the complete set of all PSDU (PLCP Service Data Unit) transmissions and receptions in live IEEE 802.11b/g links with very high timing resolution. This tool provides an in-depth view of the statistics of frame-losses as it makes it possible to distinguish between different loss types such as complete miss, partial corruption and physical-layer capture. Getting access to this low-level statistics on nodes that actively participate in transmissions themselves is a challenging task since the software-interface provided to the network layer needs to remain untouched and cannot be used for tracing. In this contribution we describe in detail how to non-intrusively circumvent these restrictions and also present initial results