Sensor-based architecture for QoS provisioning and fast handoff management in WLANs

As wireless local area networks gain popularity from network access providers and customers, supporting multimedia applications becomes a crucial yet unresolved challenge. The need to maintain quality-of-service in the presence of bandwidth limitations, increasing traffic volume and user mobility entails radical rethinking in resource management design in WLANs. The unique capabilities of wireless sensor networks constitute a promising research direction to tackle these issues. In this paper, we present a new sensor-based resource management architecture for enhanced QoS provisioning and handoff management in WLANs. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, we show that the framework can maximize bandwidth utilization while satisfying applications’ QoS requirements and significantly reduce handoff latency.