An enhanced heuristic technique for AP selection in 802.11 handoff procedure

Abstract

We study the problem of next Access Point (AP) selection in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) operating in infrastructure mode. In a large wireless network with multiple collocated APs, it is necessary for a Mobile Station (MS) to perform an effective next-AP selection as part of a successful handoff process. Most of the algorithms proposed for this problem use only the received signal strength indicator (RSSI), may cause all the MS to be associated to AP without taking into account geographical constraints, and result in an overall network performance degradation. In this paper we propose a heuristic model to enhance the choice of the next AP from the actual neighbor APs. From available APs, the new technique will not select the next one based only on RSSI measurements but also on other new added factors to perform a valuable handoff for the actual MS.