Heuristic approaches for access points deployment and Frequency Assignment in WLANs

In this paper, we focus on WLAN deployment through two sequential steps: (1) appropriate positioning of the optimal number of APs and (2) configuring their operating radio channels to offer a reliable service to clients. In the first step, we focus on the AP placement problem. We start by formulating the problem as a set covering problem. Then, limited by the computation complexity of the exact resolution, we propose two heuristics that provide efficient solutions. In the second step, we define the channel assignment in WLAN as a Minimum Interference Frequency Assignment Problem and propose two heuristics to deal with minimizing the overall interference in the network. A quantitative comparison with the exact solution has been highlighted. Further, the numerical results show that our algorithms provide a near-optimal performance with much lower time complexity.