Patent ID: 8818437

Claim:
A method comprising: at a wireless device that serves wireless client devices in a wireless network, receiving energy in a plurality of channels of a frequency band; analyzing the received energy for occurrence and type of interference in each channel; generating a quality metric for each channel based on the occurrence and type of interference detected in the channel; assigning for each channel a bias value against selection of the channel based on whether narrowband interference is present in the channel, where assigning comprises: determining if a channel has characteristics of narrowband interference based on one or more of strength, duty cycle, or bandwidth of energy in the channel; when energy in a channel has the characteristics of narrowband interference, generating a bias value for that channel so as to more severely weight the corresponding quality metric of that channel as compared to a bias value applied to a different channel that comprises ambient noise; applying the respective bias value for each channel to the quality metric for the respective channel to produce an adjusted quality metric for each channel that weights the channel against the selection of the channel for use based on the presence of narrowband interference in the channel; and selecting a channel based on the adjusted quality metric for each of the plurality of channels.