Reflection Is a Major Source of Poor WLAN Performance
Reflection can be the cause of serious performance problems in a wireless LAN. As a wave
radiates from an antenna, it broadens and disperses. If portions of this wave are reflected,
new wave fronts will appear from the reflection points. If these multiple waves all reach the
receiver, the multiple reflected signals cause an effect called multipath.
Multipath can degrade the strength and quality of the received signal or even cause data
corruption or cancelled signals. (Further discussion of multipath occurs later in this chapter.
Hardware solutions to compensate for the negative effects of multipath, such as directional
antennas and antenna diversity, will be discussed in Chapter 4, “RF Signal and Antenna
Concepts.”)
Although reflection and multipath can be your number one enemy, new antenna technologies such as Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) may become commonplace in the future
to actually take advantage of reflected signals.