IEEE 802.11 Load Balancing: An Approach for QoS Enhancement

Abstract. With the 802.11 WLAN multimedia applications (Video, Audio, realtime voice over IP,...) increasing, providing Quality of Service (QoS) support becomes very important since the original standard doesn't take QoS into account. The standard offers access to the wireless users only regarding physical considerations. This can lead to overloaded access points (AP) and considerable degradation of the QoS. This paper deals with this problem. It focuses on the presentation of a QoS management solution for wireless communication systems. It mainly defends that a balanced distribution of mobile stations among the available Access Points leads to better performances of the Wireless LAN. Some OPNET simulations of the proposed approach are presented to show a better resources allocation and efficiency on QoS metrics. A protocol structure between mobiles and APs is also specified for the implementation of this approach. An SDL description and MSC simulation of this protocol is provided...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: IJWIN
• Authors: Issam Jabri, Nicolas Krommenacker, Thierry Divoux, Adel Soudani
• Keywords: Access Points, IJWIN 2008, QoS Management Solution, WLAN Multimedia Applications