# The Challenges of Trace-Driven Wi-Fi Emulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.03905 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03905/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Feb 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Toward Composable Network Digital Twins: A Subgraph-Based Latency Prediction Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.18704/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Wi-Fi link is unpredictable and it has never been easy to measure it perfectly; there is always bound to be some bias. As wireless becomes the medium of choice, it is useful to capture Wi-Fi traces in order to evaluate, tune, and adapt the different applications and protocols. Several methods have been used for the purpose of experimenting with different wireless conditions: simulation, experimentation, and trace-driven emulation. In this paper, we argue that trace-driven emulation is the most favorable approach. In the absence of a trace-driven emulation tool for Wi-Fi, we evaluate the state-of-the-art trace-driven emulation tool for Cellular networks and we identify issues for Wi-Fi: interference with concurrent traffic, interference with its own traffic if measurements are done on both uplink and downlink simultaneously, and packet loss. We provide a solid argument as to why this tool falls short of effectively capturing Wi-Fi traces. The outcome of our analysis guides us to propose a number of suggestions on how the existing tool can be tweaked to accurately capture Wi-Fi traces.