Distributed association control in shared wireless networks

In modern wireless networks, fairness of user throughputs is often important to efficiently utilize the available network bandwidth. Association control-control of user associations to reduce overloading of access points (APs)-has been the standard approach to address this problem. However, in the recent paradigm of shared wireless networks in both, community and commercial space, access points are increasingly managed without any central coordination. As a result, achieving user level fairness in these settings remains a challenging task. In this paper, we consider the global utility of proportional fairness. Specifically, we propose a distributed approach to association control, in which each user makes association decisions based on the information gathered from probe responses from its nearby APs. Two solutions are presented: (i) a randomized approach, in which users update their associations probabilistically, and (ii) a deterministic association rule that converges quickly. We provide theoretical guarantees on the performance of both approaches. Our simulation results show that the proposed solutions can significantly improve fairness and overall throughput compared to other association heuristics.