High Performance SDN WLAN Architecture

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Network Engineering

Background:

• Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are crucial for internet access, mobile data offloading, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
• Scalability of radio resource control in large WLANs, similar to mobile networks, presents significant challenges.
• Existing WLAN architectures struggle to maintain Quality of Service (QoS) during device mobility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance the scalability of radio resource control in WLANs through an improved architecture.
• To enable seamless device handover with guaranteed QoS during mobility.
• To demonstrate the efficiency of a Software-Defined Network (SDN) based WLAN architecture.

Main Methods:

• An improved IEEE 802.11 architecture integrating wireless management into the OpenFlow protocol was proposed.
• Encryption and decryption processes were separated from Access Points (APs) to offload processing.
• The architecture's functionality and scalability were validated using Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) and two real-world scenarios.

Main Results:

• The proposed SDN WLAN architecture facilitates communications during device movements without compromising QoS.
• Fast, seamless handover with QoS was achieved, leading to efficient radio resource utilization in large networks.
• Separating encryption/decryption reduced processing load on APs, further enhancing performance.

Conclusions:

• The SDN-based WLAN architecture effectively addresses scalability and QoS challenges in large-scale wireless environments.
• The design proves efficient for delay-sensitive applications and robust under network congestion.
• This approach optimizes radio resource management and enhances user experience during mobility.