Wi-Fi Lab
Interactive tools for learning how Wi-Fi works, from how bits become a radio wave to how stations share the air. Everything runs in your browser.
Sine Wave Explorer
The building block of every radio signal. Change the amplitude, frequency, wavelength and phase, then add a second wave to see constructive and destructive interference.
Open the explorer →Wi-Fi Modulation Simulator
See how bits become a radio wave: each constellation point sets the amplitude and phase of the carrier. Add noise to see why dense modulations need a clean signal.
Open the simulator →OFDM(A) Transmission in 3D
Watch Wi-Fi send hundreds of subcarriers at once, symbol after symbol. Change the channel width, guard interval and modulation and see what happens to the data rate.
Open the visualiser →mW to dBm Calculator
Convert power between milliwatts and dBm with the formula worked through, plus a conversion table from 0 to 43 dBm.
Open the calculator →Free Space Path Loss
How much a Wi-Fi signal weakens with distance, and why. Move the receiver away, double the distance, and see the inverse square law and the frequency's effect on the loss.
Open the calculator →Power Budget Calculator
Add up every gain and loss between an AP and a client to find the received signal, the margin, and whether the link is balanced both ways.
Open the calculator →Fresnel Zone Calculator
How much clear space a point-to-point link needs around its line of sight, with a side view of the zone and every step of the calculation.
Open the calculator →RF Propagation Simulator
A live wave simulation of how Wi-Fi signals reflect, scatter, refract, diffract and fade through walls, with real material sizes at 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz.
Open the simulator →Multipath Simulator
See why moving a phone a few centimetres can change the signal by 20 dB. Drag an access point and a client around a room and watch the reflections add up or cancel, and how MIMO turns them to its advantage.
Open the simulator →Beamforming Simulator
See how several omnidirectional antennas steer a signal: their waves add up at client A and cancel elsewhere, including at client B.
Open the simulator →MCS Index
Data rates for every 802.11n, ac, ax and be MCS with up to four streams. See how each rate is calculated, or find the MCS behind a device's link rate.
Open the MCS Index →Throughput Simulator
Why one slow client can drag everyone down. Watch clients take turns on the channel, then remove the slowest or switch on airtime fairness.
Open the simulator →802.11 Medium Access Simulator
Watch stations defer, count down, collide, retry and transmit on a shared channel, one microsecond at a time.
Open the simulator →