Optimal frequency assignment for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks
The performance of wireless local area networks (WLANs) is based on the performance of the corresponding access points (APs). Nowadays, network engineers tend to manually assign data channels (frequencies) for each AP. They only use channels 1, 6, and 11 because no interference exists between these channels. But it will be far more efficient if all 11 channels are used. Therefore, the channel allocation problem becomes a major challenge when deploying WLANs. In this paper, we assume that the location of each AP is known. Our objective is to optimally assign a frequency for each AP such that the throughput is maximized and the interference between the various All's is minimized. We also consider a realistic scenario where the APs are not in line of sight of each other, but oil the other hand there are different barriers that separate them. We formulate the problem using integer linear programming (ILP) in order to obtain the optimal frequency assignment (OFA). Then, we propose two efficient heuristic algorithms to achieve the same results. Finally, we evaluate the performance of all techniques and make a comparison between them. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
optimization frequency assignment 802.11 wireless networks integer linear programming