A user-centric network management framework for high-density wireless LANs

With the ever increasing deployment density of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), more and more access points (APs) are deployed within users' vicinity. The effective management of these APs to optimize users' eventual throughput becomes an important challenge in the high-density deployment environment. In this paper, we propose a user-centric network management framework to optimize the throughput of users operating in the high-density WLANs taking into consideration the network conditions sensed by users and their access priorities. The proposed framework is built around an information pipeline that facilitates the sharing of the information needed for optimal management of communication resources. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulations are presented on two major management activities: AP association and channel selection, and demonstrate that the proposed user-centric network management framework significantly outperforms traditional network management framework in the high-density deployment environment.