Enhancements of minimax access-point setup optimisation approach for IEEE 802.11 WLAN

Abstract

As a flexible and cost-efficient Internet access network, the IEEE 802.11 wireless local-area network (WLAN) has been broadly deployed around the world. Previously, to improve the IEEE 802.11n WLAN performance, we proposed the four-step minimax access-point (AP) setup optimization approach: 1) link throughputs between the AP and hosts in the network field are measured manually, 2) the throughput estimation model is tuned using the measurement results, 3) the bottleneck host suffering the least throughput is estimated using this model, and 4) the AP setup is optimized to maximize the throughput of the bottleneck host. Unfortunately, this approach has drawbacks: 1) a lot of manual throughput measurements are necessary to tune the model, 2) the shift of the AP location is not considered, and 3) IEEE 802.11ac devices at 5 GHz are not evaluated, although they can offer faster transmissions. In this paper, we present the three enhancements: 1) the number of measurement points is reduced while keeping the model accuracy, 2) the coordinate of the AP setup is newly adopted as the optimization parameter, and 3) the AP device with IEEE 802.11ac at 5GHz is considered with slight modifications. The effectiveness is confirmed by extensive experiments in three network fields.