Stochastic Modeling of Microwave Oven Interference in WLANs

An IEEE 802.11b/g/n wireless local area network (WLAN) experiences significant radio frequency interference (RFI) from microwave ovens, cordless phones, Bluetooth, and other WLANs operating in the 2.4 GHz band. In the 2.4 GHz band, operating microwave ovens emit interference that can either prevent an access point from transmitting or cause dramatic increase in bit errors in the receiver. This paper reduces disruption in real-time transmission and reception of high-definition streaming video by mitigating oven-generated RFI. The proposed contributions of this paper include (1) a statistical-physical model of oven-generated RFI in WLAN channels that is dependent on distance and frequency, (2) an increase in the information rate bound of up to 5 bits/s/Hz due to the more realistic statistical-physical model of oven-generated RFI, and (3) a proposed transmission strategy to achieve the higher information rate bound.