Data traffic load balancing and QoS in IEEE 802.11 network: Experimental study of the signal strength effect

TL;DR

This paper experimentally evaluates load balancing algorithms in IEEE 802.11 networks, highlighting the importance of signal strength in maintaining QoS for multimedia applications, and proposes a new algorithm considering RSS levels.

Contribution

It introduces a new load balancing algorithm that incorporates received signal strength to improve multimedia transmission quality in Wi-Fi networks.

Findings

Load balancing without considering RSS can degrade performance.

The proposed algorithm improves throughput and QoS for MPEG-4 video.

Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the new approach.

Abstract

The performances of multimedia applications built on wireless systems depend on bandwidth availability that might heavily affect the quality of service. The IEEE 802.11 standards do not provide performed mechanism for bandwidth management through data load distribution among different APs of the network. Then, an AP can be heavily overloaded causing throughput degradation. Load Balancing Algorithms (LBAs) was been considered as one of the attractive solution to share the traffic through the available access points bandwidths. However, applying the load balancing algorithm and shifting a mobile connection from an access point to another without considering the received signal strength indicator of the concerned APs might causes worst communication performances. This paper is a contribution to check the performance's limits of the LBA algorithm through experimental evaluation of communication metrics for MPEG-4 video transmission over IEEE 802.11 network. Then, the paper focuses on the proposition of a new LBA algorithm structure with the consideration of the RSS level.