Decentralized Access Point Selection Architecture for Wireless LANs

Yutaka FUKUDA
Yuji OIE

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E90-B    No.9    pp.2513-2523
Publication Date: 2007/09/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e90-b.9.2513
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Network Management/Operation
Keyword: 
wireless LAN,  access point (AP),  AP selection,  

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Summary: 
Multiple access points (APs) are much more likely to be available for stations (STAs) due to the popularity of wireless LANs. The serious issue of how an appropriate AP is selected from those that are available in a wireless LAN therefore arises. We discuss the development of a decentralized architecture for selecting APs, and examine its fundamental characteristics. The proposed architecture should be introduced without adversely affecting the performance of the existing common architecture that is currently being deployed. Therefore, the deployability of our architecture is examined in this respect. Furthermore, the dynamic behavior of the proposed architecture is studied in addition to static characteristics to evaluate its robustness against various dynamic changes in situation due to AP breakdowns and bursty arrivals of STAs. Simulations revealed that the proposed architecture can attain excellent performance in all the cases treated here.