Title: A quality of service based planning for IEEE802.11g networks

Authors: Tarik Aouam, Mohammed Boulmalf, Hamid Harroud

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Al Hosn University, AbuDhabi 38772, UAE. ' Department of Computer Science, School of Science and Engineering, Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane 53000, Morocco. ' Department of Computer Science, School of Science and Engineering, Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane 53000, Morocco

Abstract: In this article, we propose a network planning algorithm for IEEE802.11g, which minimises the total interferences between access points while maintaining a required quality of service (QoS), measured by users| signal to interference ratio (SIR). Three planning problems are formulated as integer linear programs. (1) A frequency assignment problem, which assigns frequencies to access points while minimising total interferences and ensuring users| SIR higher than a required threshold. (2) Assuming the optimal frequency assignment, a power management problem is modelled to assign five different power levels to access points while reducing the network total interference and ensuring the required QoS is met. (3) Given the frequency and power assignments, a load balancing problem is formulated to minimise the maximum number of users assigned per access point, taking into consideration users| QoS. Once the planning is done, new joining users are dynamically assigned to the less loaded acceptable access point. Based on realistic scenarios analysis, we show that the proposed planning achieves significant improvement in average user SIR and power savings while balancing the network. In fact, for one of the analysed scenarios the algorithm achieved 55% power savings while the SIR increased by 6 dB improving the QoS.

Keywords: integer programming; load balancing; network planning; power management; quality of service; QoS; SIR; WLANs; wireless LANs; wireless networks; local area networks; IEEE802.11g; signal to interference ratio.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAACS.2009.024416

International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems, 2009 Vol.2 No.2, pp.128 - 142

Published online: 03 Apr 2009 *

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