A Study on Dynamic Load Balance for IEEE 802.11b Wireless LAN

We study the problem of load balancing in 802.11-based wireless networks, operating in infrastructure mode. In a large wireless network with multiple collocated Access Points (AP), a load balancing policy is necessary for the distribution of the wireless stations (WS) to the AP’s, so as the network performance to be maximized. Already proposed algorithms, which are based only on the received signal strength indicator (RSSI), may cause all the WS to be associated to a single or to a very few number of AP, and result in an overall network performance degradation. In this paper, we propose a load balancing procedure, which acts in two separate levels. First, the AP’s are either distributed across the channels (if the number of AP is small) or located in the same channel that is specified by taking into account the channel-location and the received RSSI of the neighbor AP. Second, the WS are distributed across all the available AP based not only on RSSI measurements but also on the number of WS already associated to the AP and other link quality measurements. Besides, in this paper we describe the signaling extension needed for the implementation of the proposed load balancing procedure.