Design and Characterization of a Full-Duplex Multiantenna System for WiFi Networks

In this paper, we present an experiment- and simulation-based study to evaluate the use of full duplex (FD) as a potential mode in practical IEEE 802.11 networks. To enable the study, we designed a 20-MHz multiantenna orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) FD physical layer and an FD media access control (MAC) protocol, which is backward compatible with current 802.11. Our extensive over-the-air experiments, simulations, and analysis demonstrate the following two results. First, the use of multiple antennas at the physical layer leads to a higher ergodic throughput than its hardware-equivalent multiantenna half-duplex (HD) counterparts for SNRs above the median SNR encountered in practical WiFi…