CADWAN – A Control Architecture for Dense Wi-Fi Access Networks

The growing demands of ubiquitous computing are leading towards the densification of wireless access networks. The challenges of high density deployments can be addressed by network- wide centralized control. To this end we propose CADWAN – a Control Architecture for efficient management of Dense Wi-Fi Access Networks. Its main advantages are: flexibility (it supports software- defined wireless networking), scalability (it uses a three-tier optimization framework), and extendibility (it exploits a unified control interface with support for heterogeneous devices). Furthermore, CADWAN is complementary to ongoing developments in IEEE 802.11, especially 802.11ax.