Knightly, Edward W2020-04-232021-05-012020-052020-04-21May 2020Da Silva Goncalves, Vinicius. "PERFORM: A Platform for Experimental Research in WLAN with Focus on Real Network Traffic and Multi-User Channel Access." (2020) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108349">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108349</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108349Multi-user (MU) - MIMO and OFDMA - is the next revolution in WiFi. Many experimental platforms today can support the exploration of physical layer aspects of MU but cannot run real-time experiments integrated into end-to-end network systems. However, recent work has shown that real network traffic regimes can be equally important to the MU performance of a WLAN. In this thesis we present PERFORM, a novel experimental platform for implementation and evaluation of WLAN MAC policies. This platform is the first end-to-end integrated system that carries real-time network traffic and, at the same time, allows for the flexible prototyping and evaluation of advanced WLAN MAC policies, including MU-MIMO, OFDMA, triggered uplink access, buffer status report, and data-driven policies. We present the platform validation experiments and also show the application of PERFORM in two uplink MU-MIMO experiments to showcase its capabilities and the new research that it enables.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.WirelessWLANEmulationMulti-UserExperimental PlatformMedium Access ControlThesis2020-04-23