Automatic Optimization Algorithms for the Planning of Wireless Local Area Networks

P. Wertz, M. Sauter and F. M. Landstorfer

Institut fr Hochfrequenztechnik, University of Stuttgart Pfaffenwaldring 47, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany www.ihf.uni-stuttgart.de wertz@ihf.uni-stuttgart.de
Abstract The planning of wireless local area network (WLAN) infrastructures that supply large buildings or areas requires the consideration of many aspects (coverage, different traffic densities, interference, cost minimization) and therefore is a difficult task if done manually. In this paper a method is presented that allows to optimize such networks automatically. The approach is based on predictions of the received power to account for the propagation conditions that have a major impact on the performance of WLANs. The optimization is applied to a set of possible locations where access points can be installed. Out of this set a minimum selection of locations is made to meet the given requirements. These requirements consist of the determination of areas with different priorities and the definition of further parameters. The optimization not only takes into account the required coverage and capacity but also the interference situation. The arising co-channel interference is minimized by an appropriate assignment of the available carrier frequencies. The discussed approach may not find the global optimum in all cases, but it yields a suggestive result based on the locations defined by the network planner. Due to the very short computation time different configurations can be analyzed very quickly. Keywords- Wireless Local Area Network, WLAN, Access Point, Optimization, Network Planning, Wave Propagation Modeling, Indoor Scenario

G. Wlfle, R. Hoppe
AWE Communications GmbH Otto-Lilienthal-Str. 36, 71034 Bblingen, Germany www.awe-communications.com gerd.woelfle@awe-communications.com assignment in the planning process depending on the standard used for the network installation. As a basis for the optimization, the usage of accurate propagation models [3, 4] is crucial (see section II). Such models are available in an application [5] that also hosts the additional tool discussed here. This tool supports the network planner very effectively as it allows to find an optimized selection of AP locations automatically in a very short time. This resulting selection will be a tradeoff between best received power and minimum interference which may be weighted by the user. II. DESCRIPTION OF THE APPROACH

In order to find a globally optimized solution all possible combinations of selected APs would have to be assessed in order to choose the one which performs best according to the requirements. With the number of potential locations, this combinatorial problem leads to an exponential increasing variety of solutions. The required computation time for such an approach would therefore not be acceptable, especially for the planning of large installations. Therefore a different approach was made to find adequate solutions with a much smaller computational demand. The applied algorithms are based on a set of input parameters which allow the network planner to define the desired requirements. The most important information is the position of the possible installation sites. For each of these potential positions, a wave propagation prediction (see figure 1) is computed. As the optimization results heavily depend on the accuracy of the wave propagation prediction, a very accurate ray tracing model is used [3, 5].

I.

INTRODUCTION

Since the introduction of the first wireless local area network (WLAN) standards, the acceptance and use of components providing high data rate connections to mobile terminals have increased very quickly. For smaller scenarios with only a few access points (AP) to be installed, no complex network planning is needed. However, network solutions supplying larger areas like public hot-spots, university campus, office buildings etc. need much more sophisticated planning methods [1, 2]. At first glance the task of a network planner is to build up an infrastructure which offers sufficient coverage to fulfill the given requirements concerning the capacity demands. Due to the low number of available non-overlapping frequency channels (especially with standards using the 2.4 GHz band), the problem of co-channel interference has a major impact on the performance of the network and should therefore also be considered. This results in the need to also include the carrier

Fig. 1: Prediction of the received power using a ray tracing model

Since it is very difficult for network planners to exactly estimate the expected traffic amount for the individual locations in the scenario, the requirements for capacity and availability are represented as priorities in a priority-map (see figure 5 in section III). The user additionally has to define the following parameters both for the lowest and for the highest priority: minimum received power carrier to interference ratio (CIR) transmitter densities (described by a minimum needed mean difference between the received power of two transmitters)

Fig. 2: Dependence of power difference on priority

Furthermore, two different carrier assignment algorithms can be selected and the weighting of the received power and interference assessment in the objective function can be defined. In the first step the predicted coverage of every potentially installed transmitter is assessed regarding the priority and the received power of each pixel in the considered area. The assessment is realized by a piecewise defined function which results from a previous linguistic description (see figure 4). The mean assessment over the whole scenario is a measure for the importance of each possible site. In the second step the density of the available transmitter locations is reduced depending on the priority settings of the affected areas. This is realized by finding groups of sites whose provided coverage show large overlapping, which means that the mean absolute difference between their provided coverage is below a certain level (see figure 2). Out of such a group the AP with the greatest importance is chosen f or further considerations as well as those APs which do not belong to any group. This first pre-selection algorithm provides a minimized number of used APs as well as better conditions to reduce interference problems.

In the next more costly step the remaining APs are sequentially added (following their importance) to a solution set. Hence APs which supply important areas belong to the solution set for sure. To each of these sets an iterative carrier assignment algorithm is applied following the steps: 1. 2. Start at the most relevant AP. Continue at the next AP from the current solution set that has the lowest path loss to the current AP (see fig. 3).

carrier assigned assign carrier carrier assigned

Fig. 3: Finding the next AP for carrier assignment

Every pixel is assessed!

Parameters:
- max. needed received power - min. needed received power

prio power low High

low Very low relevance low relevance

high low relevance high relevance

CoverageAssessment ( x, y)
CoverageAssessment (Site) =
x= 0 y =0

xmax ymax

npixels

in building

Fig. 4: Coverage assessment

3.

Assign carrier according to one of two algorithms explained below. The Received Power Algorithm distributes the available carrier frequencies based on the mutual received powers between the APs. For this, the received power of the APs to which a carrier was already assigned is evaluated at the location of the individual AP. The carrier which is received with the lowest power is then chosen. The Mutual Interference Algorithm takes into account the whole area of the scenario by assessing the possibly resulting interference between the APs if working on the same carrier frequency. This assessment works similar to the one for the coverage described above.

wcir and wcov are the weighting factors for the assessment functions Acir and Acov for the CIR and the coverage
respectively. Finally the set of APs with the best objective function is the desired solution and is therefore output to the user. III. RESULTS

The resulting entire coverage and the co-channel interference for each combination of APs is assessed regarding the given priority requirements. For example areas with a high priority should be served by more APs with a higher received power and not suffer from a bad co-channel interference. Therefore the already described assessment functions are used. The final objective function is the sum of both assessments weighted in accordance with the user settings:

To present the achievable results the scenario shown in figure 5 is investigated. It consists of an office building with an area of approx. 10,000 square meters. 57 possible AP locations were defined. Out of a range of 6 priority values (0-5) only 0 (white, no WLAN access expected), 1 (green), 3 (blue) and 5 (yellow, high importance) are used to mark areas with different requirements. The most important of the chosen parameters are:

w cir / w cov = 0.3 / 0.7 mean received power difference at priority 5 : 5 dB mean received power difference at priority 1 : 15 dB

OF = wcir Acir + wcov Acov

(1)

As can be seen in figure 6, the finally selected APs provide a coverage which obviously depends on the entered priorities. Areas marked as unimportant (priority 0) are much more likely to be supplied with less or insufficient received power.

Prio Prio Prio Prio

0 1 3 5

Fig. 5: Priority map including the possible access point locations

Fig. 6: Coverage with the automatically selected APs

Figure 7 shows the resulting carrier assignment. In this case the Mutual Interference Algorithm was applied. Figure 8 shows the co-channel interference situation in the entire building. The rooms with the highest priority are not affected by interference problems. In lower priority areas some interference can be tolerated. The worst values (blue color) occur at places with the lowest priority. Obviously the found solution does not prevent arising co-channel interference

problems in any case. This results especially from the use of only 3 carrier frequencies. But it is evident that the interference situation is successfully optimized in areas with high priority (see figure 5). To analyze the impact of the priority map a different example is used where extreme priority values were defined (see figure 9). A high received power and thus good coverage is found in the areas marked with high priority

Fig. 7: Applied carrier assignment

Fig. 8: Resulting co-channel interference

Prio 0 Prio 5

Fig. 9: Impact of the priority map

The computation time for the presented results is approximately 5 seconds for each scenario using a standard PC with a 1 GHz processor. The additional computation time for the propagation analysis is in the range of 15 seconds per possible AP site, but has to be done only once per scenario. IV. OUTLOOK

planning parameters and check the corresponding results. However, due to the short computation time, this is not a major drawback. As the host application [5] also supports the propagation analysis with a transition between urban scenarios and scenarios in enclosed spaces [6], the approach can also be used for the planning of networks in mixed urban/indoor environments (like a campus). REFERENCES
[1] [2] M. Hein, B. Maciejewski, Wireless LAN, Funknetze in der Praxis, Franzis Verlag, 2002 M. Unbehaun, M. Kamenetsky, The evolution of wireless LANs and PANs - On the deployment of picocellular wireless infrastructure, IEEE Wireless Communications, Volume: 10, Issue: 6, pp. 70 80, Dec. 2003 R. Hoppe, G. Wlfle, P. Wertz, F. M. Landstorfer, Advanced RayOptical Wave Propagation Modeling for Indoor Environments Including Wideband Properties, European Wireless 2002, Firence (Italy), Feb. 2002 C. Carciofi, A. Cortina, C. Passerini, and S. Salvietti, Fast Field Prediction Techniques for Indoor Communication Systems, 2nd European Personal and Mobile Communications Conference (EPMCC), Bonn, pp. 37 - 42, Nov. 1997 AWE Communications, Germany, Software Tool WinProp for the Planning of Mobile Communication Networks (incl. demo-version), www.awe-communications.com, January 2004 P. Wertz, D. Zimmermann, R. Hoppe, G. Wlfle, F. M. Landstorfer, Hybrid Ray Optical Models for the Penetration of Radio Waves into Enclosed Spaces, VTC Fall 2003 , Orlando (Florida, USA), Oct. 2003

So far, the approach can only be applied to systems with non-overlapping carriers. It could be extended in the way that the interference of overlapping carriers is adequately assessed allowing to use more of the available carriers (especially in standards working in the 2.4 GHz Band). It is expected that this leads to a better optimization result due to the fact that there is a higher degree of freedom. Furthermore, the interference assessment could be extended to consider also the uplink. This could be realized with a statistical user distribution model that again takes into account the priority map. V. CONCLUSIONS

[3]

[4]

In this paper a new approach is described to optimize WLANs in regard of coverage, interference and required availability. The proposed approach may not find the global optimum that would be theoretically found by testing all possible solutions (which is impossible in an acceptable amount of time), but it will lead to an adequate solution. For this, it may be necessary for the network planner to vary

[5]

[6]