Fuzzy Load Balancing for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

Wireless networks (WNs) are today used in many areas thanks to several benefits deriving from the ease of installation and maintenance and the high scalability. However, in large areas, the increasing number of nodes implies that Access Points (APs) are the main responsible of clients’ connection. An overloaded access point may compromise requirements in terms of timeliness of data exchanged among the clients. This paper proposes a load balancing technique for IEEE 802.11 networks based on fuzzy logic in order to ensure the achievement of typical constraints that characterize a wireless scenario. To validate the goodness of the proposed approach several real test-bed scenarios were implemented and load distribution was evaluated.