Access Point Design with a Genetic Algorithm

The interest in deploying local wireless networks has increased in the corporate environment, in recent years, as a result of several improvements in their features. Nevertheless, there are some problems caused by inadequate positions of access points (APs) which overload some cells of the total area to be covered. Some strategies of AP positioning aim only at covering the environment. Some aspects, such as, the number of users per AP and reducing the distance from the users to an AP, could be objective function parameters in the network optimization problem. This article presents a novel model to AP design, where the area covered and the users connected are maximized, and the number of APs is minimized. Two different algorithms to deal with the AP design are presented, the greedy search heuristic and a genetic algorithm. Three experimental studies with different areas to be covered were conducted. in all of them, both algorithms reached their targets, i.e., all the grid area was covered and all users were served.