1. Management Enhancement for WLAN
November 2011
doc.: IEEE /1507r1
Nov 2012
Management Enhancement for WLAN
Date:
Authors:
Yunlu Liu (China Mobile)
Stephen McCann, RIM

2. November 2011
doc.: IEEE /1507r1
Nov 2012
Abstract
With the increasing use of WLAN, especially the use for cellular offload, several problems are introduced, such as low accessibility, abnormal traffic interruption, etc.
These problems may be caused by interference due to densely deployed APs, too many STAs, and so on.
It’s hard and costly to fix these problems in time.
We suggest to study automatic solution for this issue.
Yunlu Liu (China Mobile)
Stephen McCann, RIM

3. Current situations CMCC has deployed 3 million APs
September 2012
doc.: IEEE /xxxxr0
Nov 2012
Current situations
CMCC has deployed 3 million APs
Most of the APs are deployed densely at the hotspots, e.g., airport, shopping mall, etc.
In 2012, more than 17% of the cell phone traffic in CMCC network is from WLAN
Only three non-overlapping channels are available in 2.4GHz ISM band: the channel conflict is a big issue
Since 2012, the traffic of WLAN keeps increase at the rate 18% per month
Increased number of STAs: hard to connect to an AP and data congestion may happen .
Yunlu Liu (China Mobile)
Yasuhiko Inoue (NTT), et. al.

4. September 2012
doc.: IEEE /xxxxr0
Nov 2012
Challenges
During the operation of WLAN, many problems arise and it’s hard and costly to fix:
It is labor costly to identify the problems by checking all APs one by one
Furthermore, some of APs are located in places where hard for testers to implement routine check
Automatic solutions are necessary .
Yunlu Liu (China Mobile)
Yasuhiko Inoue (NTT), et. al.

5. September 2012
doc.: IEEE /xxxxr0
Nov 2012
Proposal
We think it’s very important for operators to observe these problems and fix them as soon as possible to improve the user experience.
Therefore, we suggest to study more on management enhancement for WLAN. Two use cases:
Accessibility:
When a STA cannot access to an AP, it logs related info. (e.g. the ID of detected AP, signal strength), and report the log after successfully connecting to AP later.
By doing this, the network can identify the access problem of certain AP.
Abnormal traffic interruption:
When a STA cannot continue its traffic due to, e.g. degraded link quality, it logs the related info. (e.g. the ID of detected AP, signal strength, channel) , and report the log after successfully connecting to AP later.
Yunlu Liu (China Mobile)
Yasuhiko Inoue (NTT), et. al.