中国邮电高校学报(英文) ›› 2016, Vol. 23 ›› Issue (6): 60-67.doi: 10.1016/S1005-8885(16)60071-7

• Wireless • 上一篇    下一篇

Pre-scan based fast handoff scheme for enterprise IEEE 802.11 networks

张彪1,温向明1,路兆铭1,雷涛2   

  1. 1. 北京邮电大学
    2. 北京邮电大学网络体系构建与融合北京市重点实验室
  • 收稿日期:2016-07-19 修回日期:2016-09-26 出版日期:2016-12-31 发布日期:2016-12-30
  • 通讯作者: 张彪 E-mail:zhangbiao@bupt.edu.cn
  • 基金资助:
    北京市教育委员会基于SDN的WLAN成果转化项目

Pre-scan based fast handoff scheme for enterprise IEEE 802.11 networks

  • Received:2016-07-19 Revised:2016-09-26 Online:2016-12-31 Published:2016-12-30
  • Contact: Biao ZHANG E-mail:zhangbiao@bupt.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    WLAN achievement transformation based on SDN of Beijing Municipal Commission of Education

摘要: In IEEE 802.11 networks, many access points (APs) are required to cover a large area due to the limited coverage range of APs, and frequent handoffs may occur while a station (STA) is moving in an area covered by several APs. However, traditional handoff mechanisms employed at STAs introduce a few hundred milliseconds delay, which is far longer than what can be tolerated by some multimedia streams such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), it is a challenging issue for supporting seamless handoff service in IEEE 802.11 networks. In this paper, we propose a pre-scan based fast handoff scheme within an IEEE 802.11 enterprise wireless local area network (EWLAN) environment. The proposed scheme can help STA obtain the best alternative AP in advance after the pre-scan process, and when the handoff is actually triggered, STA can perform the authentication and reassociation process toward the alternative AP directly. Furthermore, we adopt Kalman filter to minimize the fluctuation of received signal strength (RSS), thus reducing the unnecessary pre-scan process and handoffs. We performed simulations to evaluate performance, and the simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the handoff delay.

关键词: fast handoff, IEEE 802.11 networks, handoff delay, enterprise WLAN

Abstract: In IEEE 802.11 networks, many access points (APs) are required to cover a large area due to the limited coverage range of APs, and frequent handoffs may occur while a station (STA) is moving in an area covered by several APs. However, traditional handoff mechanisms employed at STAs introduce a few hundred milliseconds delay, which is far longer than what can be tolerated by some multimedia streams such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), it is a challenging issue for supporting seamless handoff service in IEEE 802.11 networks. In this paper, we propose a pre-scan based fast handoff scheme within an IEEE 802.11 enterprise wireless local area network (EWLAN) environment. The proposed scheme can help STA obtain the best alternative AP in advance after the pre-scan process, and when the handoff is actually triggered, STA can perform the authentication and reassociation process toward the alternative AP directly. Furthermore, we adopt Kalman filter to minimize the fluctuation of received signal strength (RSS), thus reducing the unnecessary pre-scan process and handoffs. We performed simulations to evaluate performance, and the simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the handoff delay.

Key words: fast handoff, IEEE 802.11 networks, handoff delay, enterprise WLAN