An Efficient AP Selection Scheme for Wireless Distributed Systems

In this paper, we propose an efficient access point (AP) selection scheme for wireless multi-hop networks. Some previous IEEE 802.11 studies have used multi-hop techniques to solve the shadow region and to cover the wide region in the area where the AP is deployed. However, users employing these techniques are unable to determine which AP is more efficient among the number of APs in the wireless multi-hop networks. In addition, it is very difficult to capture the status of the current channel using only the received signal strength indication (RSSI) in the existing AP selection scheme. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new AP selection algorithm with the hop count for wireless multi-hop networks. We built a wireless distributed system (WDS) that can be easily constructed as a wireless multi-hop network without expert knowledge. Then, we measured the throughput and evaluated the performance of our AP selection scheme in UDP Downlink and UDP Uplink. Based on the results of our measurements, our AP selection scheme can increase the performance of all stations in wireless multi-hop networks.