Increasing Spatial Diversity at the Wireless Client

Diversity methods have been shown recently to benefit wireless users that experience "dead spots". When a single wireless transmitter-receiver pair cannot establish a reliable link, receptions from multiple independent receivers can be combined in a variety of ways. However, the practical benefits of such methods depend on the availability of receiver diversity and have so far been limited to the upload direction that carries a small fraction of typical consumer traffic. In this paper we suggest that wireless users create their own receiver diversity by using external antennae, external wireless interfaces or employing their smartphone devices. Our measurements in the wild indicate that such diversity yields significant potential gains even if the ability to exploit it is limited by the current WLAN architecture. We propose a proof-of-concept implementation and evaluate it experimentally.