User association for load balancing with uneven user distribution in IEEE 802.11ax networks

This paper proposes a dynamic user association method to address the load balancing problem in dense IEEE 802.11ax networks with uneven user distribution, where a user determines which AP to connect to taking into consideration of multiple factors such as RSS, potential relative capacity, achievable data rate and location of users. The method is user-centric and does not incur much signaling overhead, while performance optimization can be achieved without inter-AP coordination. Simulation results have been presented to show that the proposed solution can improve load balancing and have higher average throughput for 10% worst users as well as maintain the maximal total system throughput. Our evaluation also suggests that the location-awareness of users considered in the proposed solution plays an important role to improve the performance.