The influence of meteorological variables on the performance of outdoor wireless local area networks

Improving the performance and the behavior of outdoor wireless local area networks (WLAN) is a very important objective for almost all researchers in the telematics field. In this paper, a clear relation between the weather and the performance of an outdoor WLAN is shown. This relation is extracted from a correlation analysis between several meteorological variables and the control and management frames of the data link layer of a WLAN at the Universitat Politècnica de València campus. In order to carry out this study, it was necessary to collect the required data during two months from an outdoor WLAN, as well as the meteorological variables from the weather station located at the same university campus. Then, we processed all this data and concluded that the temperature and the solar radiation affect the RTS frames, CTS frames, acknowledgments, and others.