Carol Bell

Performance study of fast BSS transition using IEEE 802.11r

The mass deployment of IEEE 802.11 based wireless local area networks (WLAN), and increased sales in portable devices supporting WLAN, have resulted in an urgent need to support real time applications while wireless users are on the move. This critical support necessitates research into current WLAN roaming capabilities. This paper discusses how WLAN roaming capabilities are affected by new standards such as security (IEEE 802.11i) and quality of service (IEEE 802.11e), and describes the new IEEE 802.11r standard, which was developed to address issues faced by real time applications that implement the security and quality of service enhancements. The performance evaluation of 802.11r prototype and the 802.11i baseline mechanisms show that a voice application using 802.11r can achieve significantly shorter transition time and reduced packet loss during AP-AP transition, and can therefore realize a noticeable improvement in voice quality.