Wireless Pers Commun (2011) 60:431440 DOI 10.

1007/s11277-011-0300-0

Wireless LAN Access Point Placement Based on User Mobility

Muhammad Tauq Mohd Fikri Azli bin Abdullah Deokjai Choi

Published online: 9 April 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2011

Abstract In a wide area campus, a university provides Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) for users to connect to the Internet. Most users take advantage of this WLAN benet by using their laptops. However, the number of smart phone users is growing fast. Since a smart phone is able to get an Internet connection using WLAN, users can use their smart phones without having to pay for a cellular operator. Users tend to use their smart phones more, due to their higher mobility compared to a laptop. This capability enables new services in the market, such as Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC), which integrates a xed network (traditional telephony, WLAN) and a mobile network (cellular) to provide seamless voice communications anytime, anywhere. These new applications require a WLAN connection availability nearly everywhere. However, due to limited budgets, a university can only install APs in places with a high connection demand. We propose a novel WLAN AP placement technique that takes user mobility into consideration. This new approach is more complete than previous approaches, which mainly focus on coverage area and throughput data. Our technique has been implemented in our university. The results show the suitability of the WLAN access point locations in our university campus based on user mobility and activities. Keywords WLAN access point placement User mobility Optimization

1 Introduction A university provides Internet connectivity to support teaching and learning processes. In order to support user mobility, the university installs WLAN Access Points (AP) in certain
) M. Tauq (B D. Choi School of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea e-mail: mtauqnzz@yahoo.com M. F. A. Abdullah Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Multimedia University, Malacca, Malaysia e-mail: mkriazli.abdullah@mmu.edu.my D. Choi e-mail: dchoi@jnu.ac.kr

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areas. A user can access the Internet using their laptop in these certain areas covered by the APs signal. On the other hand, the fast growing number of smart phone users, equipped with WLAN adapter, provides a higher mobility than enjoyed by laptop users. By using a smart phone, a user is able to connect to the Internet without having to pay for a cellular operator. It is therefore possible to provide communication services using WLAN, instead of a cellular network. Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) is an example of a service which integrates a xed network (traditional telephony, WLAN) and a mobile network (cellular network). For example, during a phone call, if the smart phone is connected to a WLAN, then the phone call is delivered using the WLAN which is free, instead of the cellular network. If there is no WLAN access, then the phone call is delivered using the cellular network. In the future, there will be many mobile application services, such as Television over IP (IPTV), video streaming, or Mobile Peer-to-Peer (MPP). All these new demands will rely on WLANs. This means that the demands on WLAN connections will increase greatly. If a university has an unlimited budget, then they can install APs in many places as needed to cover the whole campus area. However, due to limited budgets, a university must place APs in locations with high connection demand. The problem then is to select the best locations that satisfy all of the new demands with the limited available resources. Current approaches only consider coverage, throughput data estimation, predicted number of static users, type of services, and signal interference as the parameters for the demand values. Based on these current approaches, places like libraries, laboratories, auditoriums, study rooms and students centers have the highest demand values. Therefore, a WLAN designer would install APs in these locations rst. However, in our universitys case, approximately 30% of the APs have been rarely used. We argue that the current approaches only consider the number of static users. For example, a place like auditorium may have a high number of users, but this only happens when there is a big event. On the other hand, pedestrian ways or street trafc may have a more constant high demand since there are many users who use the pedestrian ways and the streets all the time. Users can now connect to the Internet using a smart phone. Because of the users high mobility and activity, the demands are dynamically changing. In another example, around 50 students may be in a classroom at a certain time. Based on the number of users, the classroom has a higher demand than the corridor. However, the classroom is only occupied for a small fraction of time per week. In addition, a classroom is a place for learning, instead of browsing the Internet or calling friends. Clearly, this curtailing of the users activities reduces the demand value of the classroom. A corridor might have a higher demand than classroom because of the users behavior. There will be no users connecting to the Internet in a corridor using a laptop. However, users prefer to make a call using VoIP applications on a smart phone. During his/her call, he/she may want to move from one area to another area while continuously talking over the phone. Corridors, bridges, and pedestrian ways may have a higher demand because users in these areas like to maintain continuous services with high mobility. We propose a novel WLAN AP placement technique which considers the user dynamic behaviors, such as mobility and activity. Since current smart phones are equipped with many sensors, we can infer the user behavior from these sensor values. We can classify a campus into walking and resting areas and also whether it is crowded or not in terms of the average number of users. Our approach provides better Wi-Fi services to the resting and crowded areas over the walking and quiet areas, etc. The main design of this paper is to include the user dynamic mobility as one of the parameters for WLAN placement techniques. We assume that the solution is applicable to a campus-like area, which has both indoor and outdoor spaces. We also assume that some

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general user activities can be predicted in advance, such class room usage schedules and the user mobility patterns in the campus-like wide area. The rest of this article is structured as follows: In Sect. 2, we review some of the previous works pertaining to WLAN conguration systems in order to understand the prior art. In Sect. 3, we detail our proposed approach. We determine the optimization problem and show the implementation of our case study in Sects. 4 and 5, respectively. Finally, we discuss our conclusions in Sect. 6.

2 Related Works Kobayashi et al. [4] proposed access point placement techniques for indoor WLAN. They determined the best combination of multiple access points located in certain indoor areas that minimize the average Bit Error Rate (BER). In order to get the BER value, they take into account the indoor environment, the number of access points, and the total transmission power. The indoor environment parameters consist of the number of terminals, the number of partitions, the height and coordinates of each partition, the width, the length, and the height of each room. Their research focuses only on indoor areas and assumes that the user uses a laptop or PC, which has a low mobility. They only consider the number of clients in a certain area and do not consider the users activity schedule. Maksuriwong et al. [8] take advantage of he Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) to nd the best combination of access point locations. Instead of using (BER), their aim is to maximize the signal coverage in the services area. The result of their algorithm is the number of access points and their locations. They calculate an average Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) over the whole area. Obviously, a better SNR yields a higher throughput. However, they do not consider outdoor areas, the number of clients, or user mobility. They only consider a wall, which has an attenuation 8 dB, as a real environment variable. Kouhbor et al. [5] used user position as one of the access point placement parameters. Locating the access points based on user position can increases the throughput data communication because all of the packet data transmission workload can be spread over all access points equally. However, they assume that the user locations are static and indoors. Youngseok Lee et al. [6] proposed an optimization method for AP placement and channel assignment by using integer linear programming (ILP) problem formulations. This method minimizes the channel utilization maximum. Another work by Xiang Ling and Kwan Lawrence Yeung [7] allows co-channel overlapping for multiple WLAN access points. In addition, they designed a simple local searching heuristic method, called a patching algorithm, in order to nd the optimal solution between the AP placement and the channel assignment. However, they didnt include the mobility of the users into their method. Gondran et al. [2] consider the frequency interference, number of users, and the network installation cost based on the type of access point. They also take the trafc demand into consideration and the existing WLAN access points. However, they do not consider the user mobility and activity schedule. They just consider the number of users and types of services, such as mail, video-conferencing, VoIP, etc. Since their parameters are more complete than the others [4,5,8], our proposed approach takes benet of their terminologies in order to make it easier to understand. Gondran et al. [1] also proposed two steps for the AP placement technique: Automatic Cell Planning (ACP) and Automatic Frequency Planning (AFP). ACP focuses on the location and coverage area and AFP focuses on the avoidance of co-channel interference. Firstly, they process the ACP to get optimum locations for the APs. Then, they process the AFP to avoid

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Fig. 1 The ow diagram for the proposed technique

co-channel interference. For the IEEE 802.11b/g AP standard, in order to avoid co-channel interference, one location cannot be covered by more than three APs. IEEE 802.11b/g uses frequencies from 2,400 MHz to 2,483 MHz. Each channel uses 22 MHz and 5 MHz for adjacent-channel interference avoidance. However, in our case, the problem is not co-channel interference but the limited number of AP due to budget limitations. Therefore, we argue that there will be no co-channel interference. We just focus on the AP placement technique. Huang et al. [3] propose AP deployment strategies for outdoor WLANs. They assume that the APs are mounted on streetlamps. Their solutions try to minimize cabling by using wireless communication among the APs. There is only one AP which is connected to the router through a cable. This AP acts as a gateway for all of the other APs. They only consider coverage as essential factors. However, they do not consider the number of users or user mobility. Their solution can lead to an unequal workload for each AP. For example, if the number of connected users in all of the APs is not the same, then some of the APs may work harder than the others. Our proposed approach takes the number of users and their mobile patterns into consideration.

3 The Proposed Technique We propose a technique that plans the placement of WLAN APs in a campus-like area as illustrated in Fig. 1, with new parameters that take into account user mobility. In [2], they included many parameters that could affect the estimation of the WLAN AP placement. However, our technique includes additional parameters which are not included in their work. Our model contains two main categories: the user and the throughput. As seen in Fig. 1 , the two categories input values used to estimate the difference between the provided and demanded capacity of the wireless LAN network. This value will then be used by an optimization algorithm to nd the optimized locations and at the same time minimize wasted capacity. 3.1 The User Category The user category models the mobile and static users. Each AP has an area which is called its service zone, where the users can make a network connection to that particular AP. In

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different service zones there are different numbers of users using the network services. Users may connect to the network while walking, standing, sitting, or working at an ofce. Therefore, we classify users into two types based on their mobility: mobile and static users. Mobile users are users that connect to the network while moving, such as walking or running. They use mobile devices, such as smart phones and PDAs, in order to connect to the network. Usually, this type of user connects to the network for a short period of time. As an example, there are users who use VoIP on mobile phones while walking from one building to another building in a campus. The users need to connect to the AP before the use of the VoIP service. Normally these users only make a call using VoIP for a short period of time. On the other hand, static users are users that connect to the network while at a certain location for a long period of time. Normally this type of user uses a personal computer to use the network services. They connect to the network for a longer period of time. Static users use more network services than mobile users, such as internet browsing, VoIP, online games, e-commerce, email, etc. Ofce personnel are an example of static users. They have their own desk and PC to work with. In addition, they use the network services for the whole of ofce hours while working. Below are the parameters for the user category used for the estimation of the WLAN access points placement: (a) um : The average number of mobile users in an hour connected to an AP inside service z zone z. (b) d m : The average duration in hours of the mobile users connected to the network in a service zone. We assume that it is at a maximum duration between the time a user enters and exits the service zone of a particular AP while moving. (c) us : The average number of static users in an hour connected to an AP inside service z zone z. (d) d s : The average duration in hours of static users connected to the network in a service zone. The static users normally connect to the network for a long time. (e) r d : The maximum demanded bit rate for a user. Users use different types of network services, such as internet browsing, VoIP, networked games, e-commerce, video conferencing, email, IM, etc. These different network services require different bit rates. In our model, we assume that this value is the maximum bit rate demanded by users in the campus area. 3.2 The Throughput Category This category estimates the total throughput demanded by users and provided by the network. In this category we use the term capacity to describe the relative network load at the network. It doesnt refer to the actual capacity of the network; it is only used for comparison purposes. This category uses the parameters from the user category to estimate the total capacity demanded by the users and provided by an AP in a particular service zone. Below are the required parameters for the throughput category: (a) r p : The maximum bit rate provided by an AP. This parameter indicates the maximum bit rate provided by an AP based on the protocol used. Table 1 shows the maximum bit rate for the different 802.11 protocols found in [9]. The following parameters are the values calculated from the parameters in the user and throughput categories: (a) The total provided capacity from the AP in a service zone z in a day: cz = r p 24
p

(1)

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436 Table 1 The maximum bit rates of the IEEE 802.11 standards [9] Standard 802.11 802.11a 802.11b 802.11g Spectrum ( GHz) 2.4 5.0 2.4 2.4

M. Tauq et al. Maximum bit rate r P (Mbps) 2 54 11 54

This value indicates a relative capacity provided by an AP. Since the AP operates for 24 h a day, we can assume that the total capacity is the result of multiplying the maximum real bit rate provided by an AP over 24 (hours). (b) The total demanded usage duration at particular AP in service zone z in a day:
t dz = (um d m ) + (us d s ) z z

(2)

Each AP service zone has a different number and duration of mobile and static users. Therefore the total demanded usage duration is the sum of the demanded usage from the mobile and static users. (c) The total demanded capacity from the users at a particular AP in service zone z in a day:
d t cz = dz r d

(3)

The value is the result from the multiplication between the total demanded usage duration and the maximum demanded bit rate by a user. (d) The difference between the total provided capacity and the total demanded capacity at the AP in service zone z:
z d = c z cz z p

(4) < 0, then the

If z 0, then the request at the AP in service zone z is satised. If request at the AP in service zone z is not satised.

4 The Optimization Problem The previous section details all of the parameters required to estimate the optimized WLAN access point locations. We can categorize the estimation problem as an optimization problem since we have to determine some parameters while minimizing other parameters. It is open to the WLAN designer to use any optimization technique, such as a genetic algorithm [8], since many available techniques exist. The parameter to be determined is the estimated locations of the access points. The locations need to be the most suitable places to put the APs after considering the demand from users. While determining the locations, we have to minimize the cost that is incurred because of the difference between the provided capacity by an AP and the demanded capacity from users at a particular AP. Gondran et al. in [2] have described many parameters to be minimized, but our work just focuses on the users mobility and activities. So our minimization function is only the difference between the total provided capacity and the total demanded capacity at the APs in a service zone. Below is the optimization problem formalism: Decision parameter: z, the service zone with APs.

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Minimized parameter: z , the difference between the total provided capacity and the total demanded capacity at the AP in service zone z.

5 The Case Study Implementation We constructed a case study to apply our model for estimating suitable locations to place the WLAN access points. The location of the case study is our university campus area. We selected two access point locations, as shown in Fig. 2. The map in the gure was taken from Google Maps. It illustrates the position of the buildings and roads in our university campus. The area contains two potential locations to place an AP. The locations are denoted as black circles near to the AP1 and AP2 service zones. AP1 is located near to the lecture rooms building. Thus, there are many students connected to the wireless network, but for short times during class time. The AP1 service zone contains many static users who stay in the building for quite long durations of time. AP2 is located near the universitys main gate. There are many moving students, walking or waiting, in that area. There is also a place where the students may sit and use their mobile devices to get connected to the internet. The AP2 service zone contains many mobile users who connect to the network for short durations of time. Table 2 shows the number of mobile and static users in the AP1 and AP2 service zones. The AP2 area has more mobile users because it is a location where students and university staff enter and exit the university. We estimate that the average time for the mobile users to be connected to the network is 30 minutes. On the other hand, the AP1 area has few mobile users but many static users due to the area consisting of many lecture rooms. Therefore, many students attend the lectures and connect to the network to get the lecture materials and other information from the

Fig. 2 The location of the AP1 and AP2 service zones on a map

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438 Table 2 The number of users in the AP1 and AP2 service zones Description um z dm us z ds
t dz

M. Tauq et al. AP1 50 users 0.5 h 300 users 2h 625 AP2 150 users 0.5 h 100 users 1h 175

Table 3 The capacities in the AP1 and AP2 service zones

Description rp cz
p

AP1 54 Mbps 1294 Mb 2 Mbps 1250 Mb 46 Mb

AP2 54 Mbps 1294 Mb 2 Mbps 350 Mb 946 Mb

rd The values highlighted shows the underutilized capacity of wireless networks

d cz z

Internet. Most lecture classes have a duration of 2 h. The last row in Table 2 calculates the total demanded capacity based on the mobile and static users activities. Table 3 shows the throughput values for each APs service zone. The maximum bit rate provided by the AP is 54 Mbps since they use the 802.11g protocol. We assume that the APs provide the maximum bit rate during operation. From the bit rate, we could calculate the p total relative capacity cz , provided by the AP in a day (24 h). From the data provided by the university network administrator, the maximum bit rate used by users was 2 Mbps. Thus d we could calculate the demanded capacity from users cz , for the two APs. Lastly we could determine the difference between the provided and the demanded capacity from the APs. Referring to Table 3, we see that AP1 is a better location to place an access point than AP2 because it has a smaller difference between the provided capacity and the demanded capacity. Even though AP2 had many users around the area, most of the users dont stay for an extended time. They use the network service for a short period of time, say while walking or waiting for a friend. On the other hand, AP1 has a lesser number of users, but most of the users stay connected to the network for a longer time. Therefore we conclude that the AP usage at location AP1 is more optimized than for location AP2.

6 Conclusion We proposed a technique to get optimized WLAN AP placements by taking into account the users mobility and activities. Our technique produces a better way to locate WLAN APs for installation. It helps to optimize the usage of the APs and reduces the overall cost of the APs installation. Compared to other approaches, our proposed approach is more complete in term of the parameters considered. The availability of WLAN connection in more areas would increase the number of smart phone users and applications.
Acknowledgments This research was supported by the MKE (The Ministry of Knowledge Economy), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program supervised by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency) (NIPA-2011-C1090-1111-0008).

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References
1. Gondran, A., Baala, O., Caminada, A., & Mabed, H. (2007). Joint optimization of access point placement and frequency assignment in WLAN. In Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE/IFIP international conference in Central Asia on internet (pp. 15). 2. Gondran, A., Caminada, A., Fondrevelle, J., & Baala, O. (2007). Wireless LAN planning: A didactical model to optimize the cost and effective payback. International Journal of Mobile Network Design and Innovation, 2(1), 1325. 3. Huang, J.- H., Wang, L.- C., & Chang, C.- J. (2005). Deployment strategies of access points for outdoor wireless local area networks. In Proceedings of IEEE 61st vehicular technology conference (pp. 2949-2953). 4. Kobayashi, M., Haruyama, S., Kohno, R., & Nakagawa, M. (2000). Optimal access point placement in simultaneous broadcast system using OFDM for indoor Wireless LAN. In Proceedings of the 11th IEEE international symposium on personal, indoor and mobile radio communications (pp. 200204). 5. Kouhbor, S., Ugon, J., Kruger, A., Rubinov, A., & Branch, P. (2005). A new algorithm for the placement of WLAN access points based on non-smooth optimization technique. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Advanced communication technology (pp. 352357). 6. Lee, Y., Kim, K., & Choi, Y. (2002). Optimization of AP placement and channel assignment in Wireless LANS. In Proceedings of the 27th annual IEEE conference on local computer networks (pp. 831836). 7. Ling, X., & Yeung, K. L. (2006). Joint access point placement and channel assignment for 802.11 Wireless LANs. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 5(10), 27052711. 8. Maksuriwong, K., Varavithya, V., & Chaiyaratana, N. (2003). Wireless LAN access point placement using a multi-objective genetic algorithm. In Proceedings of IEEE international conference on systems, man and cybernetics (pp. 19441949). 9. Varshney, U. (2003). The status and future of 802.11-based WLANs. IEEE Computer, 36(6), 102105.

Author Biographies
Muhammad Tauq received his rst degree in Informatics Engineering from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia in 2003. He is currently a Graduate Student at Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea. Since June 2005, he is a faculty member at the Department of Informatics Engineering, State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga, Indonesia. His main research interests are in the area of context aware system, SMS spam ltering, performance evaluation, and wireless network.

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M. Tauq et al. Mohd Fikri Azli bin Abdullah received his MSSE (Master in Software System Engineering) from University of Melbourne, Australia in 2005. He received his rst degree in Information System Engineering from Multimedia University, Malaysia in 2003. Since August 2003, he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Information Science & Technology, Multimedia University, Malaysia. His main research interests are in the area of context aware system and mobile computing.

Deokjai Choi received his Ph.D. from the Computer Science and Telecommunication Program, University of Missouri at Kansas City, in 1995. He received M.Sc. in Computer Science from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1984. His main research interest is network management system. He is currently working on advanced wireless networking and context aware system.

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