Open Access

ARTICLE

WiMA: Towards a Multi-Criterion Association in Software Defined Wi-Fi Networks

Sohaib Manzoor¹, Hira Manzoor², Saddaf Rubab^3,4, Muhammad Attique Khan⁵, Majed Alhaisoni⁶, Abdullah Alqahtani⁷, Ye Jin Kim⁸, Byoungchol Chang^9,*

1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Mirpur University of Science and Technology (MUST), Mirpur-10250 (AJK), Pakistan
2 Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, Gdansk University of Technology, 80-233 Gdansk, Poland
3 Department of Computer Engineering, College of Computing and Informatics, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, 27272, United Arab Emirates
4 National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
5 Department of Computer Science, HITEC University, Taxila, Pakistan
6 Computer Sciences Department, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, 11671, Saudi Arabia
7 College of Computer Engineering and Sciences, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia
8 Department of Computer Science, Hanyang University, Seoul, 04763, Korea
9 Center for Computational Social Science, Hanyang University, Seoul, 04763, Korea

* Corresponding Author: Byoungchol Chang. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2023, 75(2), 2347-2363. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2023.034044

Received 05 July 2022; Accepted 02 September 2022; Issue published 31 March 2023

Abstract

Despite the planned installation and operations of the traditional IEEE 802.11 networks, they still experience degraded performance due to the number of inefficiencies. One of the main reasons is the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) association problem, in which the user remains connected to the access point (AP) unless the RSSI becomes too weak. In this paper, we propose a multi-criterion association (WiMA) scheme based on software defined networking (SDN) in Wi-Fi networks. An association solution based on multi-criterion such as AP load, RSSI, and channel occupancy is proposed to satisfy the quality of service (QoS). SDN having an overall view of the network takes the association and reassociation decisions making the handoffs smooth in throughput performance. To implement WiMA extensive simulations runs are carried out on Mininet-NS3-Wi-Fi network simulator. The performance evaluation shows that the WiMA significantly reduces the average number of retransmissions by 5%–30% and enhances the throughput by 20%–50%, hence maintaining user fairness and accommodating more wireless devices and traffic load in the network, when compared to traditional client-driven (CD) approach and state of the art Wi-Balance approach.

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Keywords

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