March 2005 Tom AlexanderSlide 1 IEEE T Tom Alexander VeriWave, Inc. March 2005

Tom AlexanderSlide 2 What is IEEE T? Task group within the IEEE Wireless LANs group Formally created in August 2004 to recommend methods for testing performance of devices and systems –Goal: establish a common framework, terminology and methodology for the Wireless LAN industry

March 2005 Tom AlexanderSlide 3 Objectives of T Scope and purpose –Official scope: “to provide a set of performance metrics, measurement methodologies, and test conditions to enable measuring and predicting the performance of WLAN devices and networks at the component and application level” –Official purpose: “to enable testing, comparison, and deployment planning of WLAN devices based on a common and accepted set of performance metrics, measurement methodologies and test conditions” Output will be IEEE , a “Recommended Practice” –Uses the word “should”

March 2005 Tom AlexanderSlide 4 Vital Statistics Officers –Chair: Charles Wright, Azimuth Systems –Technical Editor: Tom Alexander, VeriWave Inc –Secretary: none yet About 15 – 20 active members –Sometimes up to 40 people attend Involvement from a broad cross-section of the WLAN industry –System and chipset vendors: Dell, Intel, Broadcom, AMD, Atheros, … –Test equipment vendors: Spirent, Azimuth, Rohde & Schwarz, VeriWave, … –Installation tools & services vendors: Wireless Valley, … –Users: Microsoft, UBC, UNH-IOL, … –And some just plain interested folks Activity –Meets during every interim or Plenary for about 10 – 16 hours –Weekly teleconferences (Thursday mornings, 9AM PST) –Ad-hoc teleconferences

March 2005 Tom AlexanderSlide 5 Work To Date Scope and framework –What kind of metrics? What sort of approach to measurement? What layer(s) do we include? –Diverse group; these discussions help build common understanding –General consensus on some key issues Both open-air and conducted metrics should be specified Metrics should be somehow tied to end-user experience Etc. Draft structure –Proposed templates for the overall draft and for individual measurement descriptions have been created, plus proposals for the organization of the standard Terminology –Key discussion point in group to date (e.g., “What is a metric? What does ‘controlled environment’ imply?) Lots of “this is how we did it” and “this is how we should do it” presentations –Very useful in assessing what is possible and what is not –Wireless measurement methodologies differ somewhat from wired

March 2005 Tom AlexanderSlide 6 Recent and Upcoming Work Convergence on some basic terminology –Examples: ‘controlled test environment’, ‘conducted test’, ‘over- the-air test’, ‘interference’, etc. –Most of these are specific to wireless testing (as opposed to benchmarking in general) Not much disagreement (yet!) on terms such as latency, throughput, loss, delay, etc. Adoption of ground rules before voting on formal proposals –Requirements for a proposal to be considered “complete” –Format and content of formal metrics & methodology proposals Timeline for first draft standard: uncertain at the moment

March 2005 Tom AlexanderSlide 7 For Further Information … The document server – – document server with T contributions –Examples of interesting contributions: # t Enabling Prediction of Wireless Performance # t Proposed Metrics and TGT Call to Action # t Measurement Methodology Proposal Based on Approved Framework # t Environment and Metrics: Laboratory vs. Real-world # t Proposed TGT Document Structure # t TGT Terminology and Concepts The T reflector March Plenary –March 14th to 18th, Atlanta, GA