SAW: Spectrum Assignment for WLANs

We consider the problem of jointly allocating channel center-frequencies and bandwidths for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs). The bandwidth used on a link significantly affects both the capacity experienced on this link and the interference produced on neighboring links. Therefore, when jointly assigning both center frequencies and channel widths, a trade-off must be found between interference mitigation and the potential capacity offered on each link. We study this trade-off and present SAW (spectrum assignment for WLANs), a decentralized algorithm that finds efficient configurations. SAW is tailored for 802.11 home networks. It is distributed, online and transparent. It does not require a central coordinator and it constantly adapts the spectrum usage without disrupting network traffic. The algorithm is decentralized and self-organizing; it provably converges towards efficient spectrum allocations. We evaluate SAW using both simulation and a deployment on an indoor testbed composed of off-the-shelf 802.11 hardware. We observe that it dramatically increases the overall network efficiency and fairness, even when some Access Points (APs) do not behave socially.