AP Deployment Optimization in Non-Uniform Service Areas: A Genetic Algorithm Approach

This paper investigates the AP deployment optimization for wireless local area networks (WLANs) within non- uniform service areas. Specifically, this paper proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) based AP deployment scheme to jointly optimize the location and the transmit power of each AP under the constraint of full coverage. Different from most existing works, the proposed scheme takes the non-uniform service area where there are various obstacles within it into fully consideration. Sufficient simulations have been done to evaluate the performance of the GA- based deployment scheme by comparing with the uniform deployment scheme. Simulation results indicate that the total transmit power can be significantly reduced by leveraging the proposed scheme while guaranteeing the full coverage of the desired service area. At the same time, the overlap rate of the WLAN can also be significantly reduced by the proposed scheme.