Home // EMERGING 2011 , The Third International Conference on Emerging Network Intelligence // View article

Association Control for Throughput Maximization and Energy Efficiency for Wireless LANs

Authors:
Oyunchimeg Shagdar
Suhua Tang
Akio Hasegawa
Tatsuo Shibata
Sadao Obana

Keywords: association control, throughput maximization, congestion alleviation, energy efficiency

Abstract:
Because the access points (APs) and the stations (STAs) of a community network are deployed at the users’ desired places, the APs and STAs tend to concentrate in certain areas. A concentration of STAs often results in the AP(s) and STAs in that particular area suffering from severe congestion. On the other hand, a concentration of APs causes energy wastage. A proper association control can effectively alleviate congestion and improve network throughput. In this paper, we analytically formulate the throughput maximization problem and show that the existing association control schemes do not necessarily maximize throughput. Furthermore, while load balancing tends to use all the existing APs, sufficient performance can be achieved by utilizing fewer APs, especially in AP-concentrated areas. This enables lower energy consumption by putting unused APs in power-saving mode. To this end, we propose an association control scheme that aims at maximizing network throughout and reducing energy consumption. Using both computer simulations and testbed experiments, we confirm that the proposed scheme provides excellent performance and that it is feasible using the off-the-shelf WLAN devices.

Pages: 112 to 117

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: November 20, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2326-9383

ISBN: 978-1-61208-174-8

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from November 20, 2011 to November 25, 2011