Study of algorithms to optimize frequency assignment for autonomous IEEE 802.11 access points

This study points to an automatic channel assignment for unadministrated, chaotic WLANs to take advantage on the given capacity of the IEEE 802.11 frequency spectrum and to enhance the quality of the entire WLAN sphere. This paper determines four public channel assignment algorithms for IEEE 802.11 networks. We show the problem of channel assignment in unadministrated WLANs and describe each algorithms functional principles. We implemented each one and simulated them on a huge amount of random topologies. The results show the timing behavior, the used iterations and the error statistics. Based on these data we determined problems in each algorithm and found graphs were they failed to find a collision free solution. We also implemented some improvements and finally a modified algorithm is presented that shows best results.