Distributed Dynamic Channel Selection in Chaotic Wireless Networks

—Wireless networks in residential neighborhoods often show a suboptimal channel assignment which can result in unnecessary congestion and poor performance. This paper introduces a heuristic, decentralized algorithm for automatic channel assignment in 802.11 access points. Our algorithm optimizes the use of available bandwidth in unmanaged deployments without requiring manual configuration. Our evaluation shows that the algorithm always performs better than a single-channel static scenario and deviates less than 5% from a manually optimized channel layout.

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