Analysis and evaluation of WiFi scanning strategies

Abstract

Considering the increasing popularity of IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) wireless accesses, users face with the necessity of maintaining a continuous connection to the network while moving. In order to tackle this issue, Mobile Stations (MS) needs to execute scanning processes to discover potential Access Points (AP). This procedure must be fast and reliable to guarantee a continuity on the connection. In this paper, we study the WiFi scanning process and then we propose and evaluate by simulation different scanning strategies focusing on the adaptation of 802.11 scanning timers: MinChannelTime and MaxChannelTime. Then, varying these timers, we obtain notable improvements over the legacy static discovery process.