Reputation Based Access Point Selection in 802.11 Network

In an 802.11 wireless network with multiple access points (APs), for a commercial user, a prime concern is how to discover the desired AP since the AP providers maybe selfish and owned by different organization. This paper presents a generic reputation based framework for AP selection for this case. An M/M/1 queuing model is introduced to get a quantitative insight into the performance of wireless AP. Analytical expression for the transmission attempt probability of packet in an 802.11 network is derived and used to calculate the reputation value. The model also shows how the reputation values can be updated based on the result of service to eliminate the impact of misbehavior AP providers. Finally results are validated via simulation with statistical analysis.