Investigation of IEEE 802.11k-based Access Point Coverage Area and Neighbor Discovery

Possessing knowledge about access point coverage areas and neighbors is of essential need for the provisioning of, e.g., location based handovers or push services. A convenient method for their discovery is the usage of information obtained by the mobile devices which are currently associated with the access points. The time span being required for the discovery of coverage areas and neighbors is fundamental in order to assess the suitability of such a method in a dynamic environment. In this paper, exemplary numerical results of the required bootstrapping phase for the information determination are presented. Additionally, a relatively simple enhancement of the algorithm computing the coverage areas is introduced, reducing the number of vertices for the description of the areas. Besides, the paper shows how the upcoming IEEE 802.11k standard enables APs to query mobile devices for location and neighbor information and hence presents for the first time an entirely standard compliant acquisition scheme.