A Study on Access Point Selection Algorithms in Wireless Mesh Networks

In IEEE 802.11 based wireless mesh network (WMN), a mesh client often finds multiple access points (AP) to associate with. How to select the best AP is the open research problem. The traditional AP selection method defined by IEEE 802.11 standard is based on received signal strength. This method is proven inefficient as it does not consider many important factors such as channel conditions, AP load, etc. Many alternate solutions have been proposed so far in the literature, but they are all focused on wireless local area network (WLAN) environment. As there are significant differences between WLAN and WMN, all these proposed association mechanisms must be redesigned to fit into WMN environment. This paper studies the AP selection problem in the context of WMN. We critically analyze the existing work and identify technical challenges involved in AP selection problem. This paper also provides directions to design the metrics of AP selection method in WMN.