Prior to setting forth a short discussion of the related art, it may be helpful to set forth definitions of certain terms that will be used hereinafter.
The term “Wi-Fi” as used herein, may include a wireless communication exchange of data over a computer network, which includes high-speed Internet connections. The Wi-Fi Alliance defines Wi-Fi as any “wireless local area network (WLAN) products that are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11 standards”. Wi-Fi access points (APs) are Wi-Fi base stations configured to communicate with the wireless devices and connect with the communication network over wires. Wi-Fi User Equipment (UE) devices (which may be referred to as “UEs”) are Wi-Fi devices that connect via Wi-Fi with the Wi-Fi access points.
While WiMAX and LTE, multi-channel Time-Domain-Duplex (TDD) basestations typically synchronize Transmitter/Receiver time interval amongst themselves, in order to avoid self jamming, the Wi-Fi 802.11 protocol does not normally lend itself to such synchronization, since it is a contention based (e.g., Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision avoidance based) protocol with little or no central control, granting independent Transmitter/Receiver switching for each channel.
Therefore, co-location of co-channel Wi-Fi APs presents a challenge since one AP's transmission would block others'; additionally, APs may jam each other's subscribers' acknowledgments, causing excessive retransmissions and loss, rather than gain of capacity.
Thus, Multi-Cell deployment efficiency depends on significant isolation between Wi-Fi cells, a condition that suits indoors applications, where walls attenuation plays a positive role; residential environments enjoy both such isolation as well as light loading created by relatively few users per AP.
Wi-Fi outdoors deployments, however, have both large users' count and poor Cell-to-Cell and Station-to-Station isolation.