Channel-aware throughput fairness in multi-cell wireless LANs

Channel characteristics in multi-cell IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs are different front those in single-cell environments due to cross-channel interference. The IEEE 802.11 protocol does not have any provisions for rate guarantees in the presence of contention, fading and interference effects. We monitor these location-dependent effects distributedly at each wireless host and use a centralized bandwidth manager to allocate bandwidth to all flows in a co-ordinated manner. Using the mobile hosts´ location, the bandwidth manager can also take advantage of spatial reuse to increase channel capacity. Our results show that we are able to detect and adapt to changing channel conditions well, and thus ensure a high level of throughput fairness among the flows.