QoS Aware Access Point Selection for Pre-Load-Balancing in Multi-BSSs WLAN

This paper presents an AP selection strategy in the office environment covered by WLAN. While most of the selection metrics balances the active load among neighboring BSSs, the quality of voice applications greatly depends on the call blocking probability which is decided by all the potential voice STAs. For this reason, we define a QoS-aware information element that is advertised from APs. On this basis, voice stations are able to select the AP which is associating with less number of voice stations so as to achieve a lower call blocking probability. In order to validate the benefit, we perform simulation using OPNET. As a result, the proposed method effectively balances the load among given BSSs, and greatly increases the number of voice calls that could be admitted into WLAN.