| Designing 802.11 wireless networks includes two major components: selection of access points (APs) in the demand areas and assignment of radio frequencies to each AP. Coverage and capacity are some key issues when placing APs in a demand area. APs need to cover all users. A user is considered covered if the power received from its corresponding AP is greater than a given threshold. Moreover, from a capacity standpoint, APs need to provide certain minimum bandwidth to users located in the coverage area.; A major challenge in designing wireless networks is the frequency assignment problem. The 802.11 wireless LANs operate in the unlicensed ISM frequency, and all APs share the same frequency. As a result, as 802.11 APs become widely deployed, they start to interfere with each other and degrade network throughput. In consequence, efficient assignment of channels becomes necessary to avoid and minimize interference.; In this work, I develop an optimal AP selection by balancing traffic load. I formulate an optimization problem that minimizes heavy congestion. As a result, APs in wireless LANs will have well distributed traffic loads, which maximize the throughput of the network. I design our channel assignment algorithm by minimizing channel interference between APs. Our optimization algorithm assigns channels in such a way that minimizes co-channel and adjacent channel interference resulting in higher throughput. |
