Wireless LAN load balancing with genetic algorithms

In recent years IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) have become increasingly popular. Consequently, there has also been a surge in the number of end-users. The IEEE 802.11 standards do not provide any mechanism for load distribution and as a result user quality of service (QoS) degrades significantly in congested networks where large numbers of users tend to congregate in the same area. The objective of this paper is to provide load balancing techniques that optimise network throughput in areas of user congestion, thereby improving user QoS. Specifically, we develop micro-genetic and standard genetic algorithm approaches for the WLAN load balancing problem, and we analyse their strengths and weaknesses. We also compare the performance of these algorithms with schemes currently in use in IEEE 802.11 WLANs. The results demonstrate that the proposed genetic algorithms give a significant improvement in performance over current techniques. We also show that this improvement is achieved without penalising any class of user. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.