Governing of access point for stations in an 802.11 network with a repeater to achieve higher throughput : Designing and implementing an algorithm on Inteno's OpenWRT based access points
Noel Irstad, Stjerne Fredrik · KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) · 2016
When using a wireless repeater in a network, an overlap zone between the repeater and the primary access point that holds the internet connection is created. The theoretical throughput for connections through the repeater is reduced by half since the repeater can’t send and receive data at the same time when using only one channel which was the case in this thesis. To solve the problem with the overlap zone, an algorithm that runs in the form of a bash script on two openWRT-based access points where one acts as a repeater and the other one is a gateway with an internet connection was developed. The script uses the signal strength value (RSSI) to decide whether a wireless device is located within the overlap zone by comparing the measured value against a set threshold where the gateway still delivers higher throughput than the repeater. Wireless devices in the overlap zone are blocked on the repeater and will then connect to the gateway instead. Wireless devices that are located outside the overlap zone will connect to the access point that yields the strongest signal strength. The throughput to the gateway was measured at several locations with different signal strengths to both the gateway and the repeater. Wireless devices within the overlap zone that were connected to the repeater before the script was run gained a higher throughput after the script was run and made it connect directly to the gateway instead.