Parameterizing Enterprise WiFi Networks: The Use of Wide Channels

Abstract

We investigate the joint channel, power, and carrier sensing threshold allocation problem in IEEE 802.11ac enterprise networks in a single 160 MHz band and show that the current practice, which is to use narrower channels at maximum power when the network is dense, yields much worse performance than a solution using the widest possible channel (i.e., 160 MHz) with a much lower power. This finding is consistent with cellular networks which use a reuse factor of one. Based on these insights, we propose and evaluate an algorithm that allocates the widest channel to all Access Points, and finds the appropriate transmission power and carrier sensing threshold for each of them to provide an efficient and fair solution to a managed IEEE 802.11ac enterprise network. The performance gains with respect to the best of the two benchmarks that we consider range from 60% in not too dense deployments to more than 200% in dense deployments.