Adaptive Channel Allocation for IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN

Conference: European Wireless 2006 - 12th European Wireless Conference 2006 - Enabling Technologies for Wireless Multimedia Communications
04/02/2006 - 04/05/2006 at Athens, Greece

Proceedings: European Wireless 2006

Pages: 6Language: englishTyp: PDF

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Authors:
Zhao, Ye; Leung, Kin K. (Electrical & Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom)

Abstract:
Today, IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) are widely deployed throughout the world. It is known that static channel assignments are not sufficient for these networks due to traffic variations. However, in order to maintain compatibility with the existing protocol standards, it is not possible to employ dynamic channel allocation methods to handle traffic-load fluctuations. Rather, adaptive assignment schemes seem to be appropriate. In this paper, we enhance the MinMax algorithm for static channel assignment for 802.11 networks proposed earlier. Based on the enhanced MinMax algorithm, we propose here a centralized adaptive channel allocation scheme for 802.11 networks. Computer simulation using the ns2 software reveals that our proposed adaptive scheme achieves a noticeable improvement of data throughput over fixed assignment algorithms, while only a relatively small number of APs require channel changes as a means to reduce service interruption to users under the existing protocol standards.