Optimal base station placement and fixed channel assignment applied to wireless local area network projects

The project of a wireless local area network (WLAN) has two major issues: determining the best placement of the base stations (BS) and assigning the frequency channels for the stations. The correct BS placement minimizes the number of stations necessary to cover the desired attendance area, reducing installation costs. The channel assignment determines the frequency band to be used by each BS, minimizing interference signals between them and improving the network throughput. This work relates a real experience where we applied the concepts of two outdoor environment classic problems, the optimal base placement problem for indoor environments and the fixed channel assignment problem, to build a wireless local area network in an indoor environment. We describe the hardware we used, the integer linear programming models developed and the results obtained.