A New Radio Channel Allocation Strategy For WLAN APs With Power Control Capabilities

For IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLAN) with multiple access points (AP), it is critical to allocate the limited number of radio channels dynamically and efficiently. This paper proposes a new framework for radio channel allocation (RCA) strategy for WLAN APs with power control capabilities. First, we formulate the RCA as a min-max optimization problem regarding channel utilization with constraints of data rate, channel quality, and transmission power. Second, we derive an expression to evaluate the channel utilization, which incorporates the condition of wireless channel, such as signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio and transmission power, in addition to the transmitting probability of a station. Third, we propose a new RCA algorithm that considers both link adaptation and power control mechanisms, in addition to the impact of co-channel interference (CCI) and multiple data rates, which have not been considered by the existing RCA schemes. Simulation results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.