Mobility-Aware Adaptive Bandwidth Selection in IEEE 802.11ah Wi-Fi HaLow for Infrastructure-Limited Rural Connectivity

Abstract

Rural highways, agricultural regions, and other infrastructure-limited environments often lack continuous cellular coverage and dedicated vehicular roadside units. Connected vehicles traversing these corridors nevertheless require intermittent links for cooperative awareness messaging, status updates, and low-rate telemetry. IEEE 802.11ah (Wi-Fi HaLow) offers extended sub-GHz reach and low-power operation suited to rapidly deployable, solar- or battery-powered access points where conventional vehicular infrastructure is absent. Selecting a fixed channel bandwidth nonetheless remains difficult: wide channels raise throughput under favourable conditions but erode robustness as distance and mobility increase, whereas narrow channels preserve link margin at the cost of capacity. This paper proposes a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR)-adaptive bandwidth selection scheme that dynamically selects among 1, 2, 4, and 8 MHz IEEE 802.11ah channels according to prevailing link quality. Performance is evaluated through cross-layer analytical modelling and packet-level ns-3 simulation against fixed-width baselines. Results show that no single bandwidth dominates across the mobility–distance envelope: wider channels favour short range and low speed, whereas narrower channels sustain more reliable delivery as conditions deteriorate. Relative to any fixed configuration, adaptive MHz selection yields a more balanced reliability–throughput trade-off for low-rate fallback connectivity along heterogeneous rural routes.