DAPA: Capacity Optimization in Wireless Networks Through a Combined Design of Density of Access Points and Partially Overlapped Channel Allocation

Abstract

Dense wireless local area networks (WLANs) have emerged as a promising design paradigm recently. While partially overlapped channels (POCs) have proved to be able to improve network capacity significantly in the dense network, they are usually considered the fixed number of access points (APs) in traditional research works. The network capacity can be scaled by providing additional APs in a given area since the expected distance from users to the associated APs becomes shorter. On the other hand, the additional increment of network capacity by means of deploying more APs is limited. It can be accredited to the substantial interference among the high number of deployed APs assigned with POCs. Furthermore, the impact of the POC model makes the design more complex. To cope with these challenges in this work, we study the problem of interaction between density of APs and POC assignment with parameter tuning and propose the approach called DAPA, in which we derive that the optimal density of APs lies in the feasible region consisting of the lower bound and upper bound density. Thus, the solution can be obtained by searching for the feasible region by means of the proposed POC assignment. Through analysis and numerical results in DAPA, we provide recommendations on the optimal dimension of high density and POC assignment, with consideration of the network configuration.