With the development of modern technologies, access to free Wi-Fi has become expected in various public and private spaces – from airports and restaurants to parks and metro. However, the standards of wireless networks, such as IEEE802.11 WLAN, have congenital disadvantages that can reduce the performance of the network when connecting new users.
To solve these problems, the team of researchers, including the Associate Professor Sumiko Miyat from the Shibaur Technology Institute (SIT), offered new method of connection to the points of access, using the theory of games. Based on a potential game model, where the goal is to maximize the overall capacity of the system, the new method takes into account the interaction between users and the probability of collisions of data packages.
A study published in the open journal IEEE Communications Society shows that the proposed connection strategy exceeds previous methods. In various scenarios, including changes in user positions, she showed an improvement in system performance by 6% compared to other techniques.
Dr. Miyata notes that such an approach can be especially useful in places with low movement of people, such as classes and libraries, where the Wi-Fi system itself calculates the optimal location of users to increase the overall bandwidth and stimulates them for cooperation for the sake of increasing their own performance.
Such methods become more and more significant in conditions when the number of devices connected to Wi-Fi is constantly growing. “Access points should effectively use their network resources. The proposed technique is important for the implementation of the concept of smart cities where everything is connected to the internet,” Mitsa concludes.