Flex-WiFi: a mixed infrastructure and ad-hoc IEEE 802.11 network for data traffic in a home environment

This paper presents a novel architecture, called Flex-WiFi, specifically designed for IEEE 802.11 home networks. Objective of the new approach is to improve legacy network capacity in such home scenarios. Network capacity is increased by allowing setting up multiple contemporary IEEE 802.11 connections using a single WLAN card. All connections share the same data link and physical layers but use different channels; the MAC is responsible to handle the channel switching as well as to allocate/de-allocate the direct link sessions. In particular we aim implementing a solution where stations can be associated to an access point and can have ad-hoc connections on a different pysical chanel at the same. The idea is to maximize the overall network capacity by transferring some traffic load from the infrastructure to a direct link session. Results have been provided by implementing Flex-WiFi in the Madwifi open source driver of the Atheros chipsets.