Deploying Wi-Fi Coverage Extenders in Home Environments: Practical Perspectives and Open Challenges

In this article, we consider the deployment of Wi-Fi extenders as a solution to the coverage hole problem in home networks. We revisit the conventional perception of network coverage that is based on the signal strength and demonstrate that interference and contention are crucial in defining the QoS aware coverage region of the AP. Based on these observations, we present a practical methodology for extender placement that only relies on network metrics available at the end-user device and/or operator, and maximize both extenders' fronthaul and backhaul link throughputs. The proposed methodology was demonstrated in a typical home environment, and the results show significant improvements in both coverage and throughput at the end-users who previously suffered from coverage holes. Due to the advanced configurations of physical parameters and crossband technologies in the current Wi-Fi extenders, new deployment trade-offs (range vs throughput) are discovered in this article. These trade-offs beside other open design challenges require much closer attention to bridge the gap between theoretical gains and practical Wi-Fi performance.