Report-based topology discovery schemes for centrally-managed Wi-Fi deployments

The density of IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks, especially in metropolitan areas, has resulted in almost ubiquitous wireless presence in such environments. Apart from the benefits of increased wireless coverage, though, uncontrolled WLAN deployment has brought to attention interference issues among neighbor wireless networks. Combating interference has become one of the keys to successful wireless infrastructure management. To this end, network topology information, such as information about overlapping cell coverage and client presence is necessary input. We wish to exploit the spectrum sensing capabilities and inherent mobility of clients in order to gather a more up-to-date view of the network topology and a user-perceived view of interference conditions. Thus, we rely on trusted clients to scan for Wi-Fi coverage and report to a centralized entity. When no trusted client reports are available, we resort to AP-based ones. We evaluate the efficiency of the above reporting scheme in accurately discovering AP topology via analysis and simulation for various urban settings with different client and AP densities and compare it with pure client-based and pure AP-based approaches.