Decentralized Partially Overlapping Channel Assignment for Multiple Independent AP in Uncoordinated High-Dense WLANs

Aiming to the problem that the non-overlapping channels often are over-used in high-dense IEEE 802.11 WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks) deployment, we investigate the assignment of partially overlapping channel to improve the performance for the legacy 802.11 WLANs. We first present a network and interference model and formulate the problem of channel assignment to the minimization of the system interference. We propose a novel interference factor that takes into account sufficiently both the channel overlapping degree and the distribution of clients. A new deployed Access Point (AP) can calculate independently this interference factor by collecting local information, and then selects an appropriate channel to operate without any extra modification requirement for existing standard. Extensive simulation has been performed to validate the proposed algorithm and also shows the improvement of system throughput by comparing with the state-of-the-art CACAO algorithm,