A Selection Method of Access Points to Improve IPTV Service Quality in WLAN Environments

In a WLAN, the data reception rate of a user station depends not only on the received signal strength (RSS) from an AP (Access Point) but also on the contention level of the AP. However, since only the RSSs measured at the physical layer have been used for a station to select an AP to associate with, the station may not satisfy the minimum quality requirements necessary for a seamless IPTV service. Thus, in this paper, we propose an AP selection method to support quality requirements of the IPTV service in a wireless LAN without modifying the IEEE 802.11 standard. A user station keeps monitoring a contention level of APs around it and a quality of an ongoing IPTV service. If the quality deteriorates below a threshold, the station reassociates with another AP having the least load so that the ongoing IPTV program is played without disruption.