AP association in a IEEE 802.11 WLAN

Nowadays, with the abundance of IEEE 802.11 access points (APs), a mobile user has the flexibility to choose one of several APs, each using a separate channel. Rather than relying on the simplistic standardized algorithm to select the AP, it would be preferable to use optimal algorithms that reduce the user data transfer time. In this paper, the AP selection process is apprehended as an ordinal potential game, which is a class of non-cooperative games known to possess at least one pure Nash Equilibrium (PNE). We put forward a fully decentralized algorithm based on replicator dynamics to attain those PNE. Further, to assess the loss in efficiency of the proposed selfish distributed algorithm, we compare its performances against a centralized optimal approach derived by solving a mixed integer linear program.