Multiple-gateway deployment for wired/wireless converged access networks

Wired/wireless converged networks offer a promising solution to broadband access. The performance of a wired/wireless converged network largely depends on the locations of gateways that interconnect the two parts. We study multiple-gateway deployment in a wired/wireless converged scenario, and formulate the problem of minimizing average distance between wireless access points and gateways, wherein distance measure can be hop count, expected transmission count, etc. An efficient scheme is proposed to globally optimize gateway locations, and meanwhile assign each access point to a gateway. Performance studies show that our approach for gateway deployment effectively improves the throughput of a wired/wireless converged network.