Self-configuration scheme to alleviate interference among APs in IEEE 802.11 WLAN

Wireless local area network (WLAN) is the one of the technologies which enable mobile users to connect to local area network through a wireless radio connection in industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band. Since WLAN can support high data rate communications with low-cost, the use of WLAN is rapidly increasing. However, in congested region, such as shopping mall, airport, and so on, where a lot of WLAN access points (AP) becomes collocated, indiscriminate installation of APs causes high signal interference and heavy contention in overlapping region among APs. In order to solve these problems, we propose self-configurable cooperative RRM (CRRM) scheme for WLAN. The proposed CRRM scheme effectively reduces the overlapping regions by cooperatively coordinating channel assignments and adjusting transmission power of neighboring APs. From simulations for various scenarios, we verify that the proposed scheme can help to mitigate interference and reduce the contention between neighboring APs.