Analysis and implementation of an Infrastructure-on-Demand scheme for 802.11 WLANs

Abstract

Resource on Demand in 802.11 Wireless LANs is receiving an increasing attention, with its feasibility already proved in practice and some initial analytical models available. However, while these models assume that access points (APs) start up in zero time, experimentation shows that this is hardly the case. In this work, we provide a new model to account for this time in the case of a WLAN formed by two APs where an AP is switched on/off dynamically to adapt to the traffic load and reduce the overall power consumption, and show that it significantly alters the results when compared to the zero start-up time case. Finally, we propose an algorithm to optimize the energy consumption of the network while guaranteeing a given performance bound and implement a novel management architecture for mobile networks based on OpenFlow, which supports RoD provisioning in a centralised control plane. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated by a real-life prototype.