On Access Point Selection in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks

In wireless local area networks often a station can potentially associate with more than one access point. Therefore, a relevant question is which access point to select “best” from a list of candidate ones. In IEEE 802.11, the user simply associates to the access point with the strongest received signal strength. However, this may result in a significant load imbalance between several access points, as some accommodate a large number of stations while others are lightly loaded or even idle. Moreover, the multi-rate flexibility provided by several IEEE 802.11 variants can cause low bit rate stations to negatively affect high bit rate ones and consequently degrade the overall network throughput. This paper investigates the various aspects of “best” access point selection for IEEE 802.11 systems. In detail, we first derive a decision metric the selection can be based on. Using this metric we propose two new selection mechanisms which are decentralized in the sense that the de...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: LCN
• Authors: Murad Abusubaih, James Gross, Sven Wiethölter, Adam Wolisz
• Keywords: Access Point, IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.11 Variants, LCN 2006