An Adaptive Symmetrical Load Balancing Scheme for Next Generation Wireless Networks

Abstract

In dense Wi-Fi networks, achieving load balancing is critical to optimize network utilization and provide equitable network consumption among the users. Traditional Wi-Fi networks have issues in attaining effective load balancing. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has presented a viable solution by isolating the data plane and control plane, enabling more agile and cost-effective networks. In this paper we put forward an Adaptive Symmetrical Load Balancing (ASLB) scheme to ensure fairness of load symmetry in Software Defined Wi-Fi Networks (SD-Wi-Fi), while also optimizing the flows transition process using an Analytical Hierarchal Process (AHP). User activity is monitored by access points (APs), which operate under OpenFlow standards. Three essential features, packet volume, packet category and delay hindrance, are used for flow assignment to various controllers. The controllers are arranged in two tiers, universal and regional controllers. The universal controller (UC) handles the workload statistics of regional controllers (RC) in the form of clusters. Extensive simulations using OMNeT++ simulator are performed. The performance parameters taken into consideration are throughput, delay, packet loss rate, network transition count and workload distribution. Our findings demonstrate that the ASLB technique effectively optimizes the network utilization and ensures equitable network consumption among the end users. The proposed scheme outperforms the Mean Probe Delay scheme (MPD), Channel Measurement-based Access Selection scheme (CMAS), Received Signal Strength Indicator-based scheme (RSSI) and Distributed Antenna Selection scheme (DASA), being 40% higher in throughput and 25% lower in delay.