Smart Scanning for Mobile Devices in WLANs

A recent proliferation of mobile devices led to immense deployment of WLAN Access Points (APs). IEEE 802.11 mobile devices periodically perform active background scanning to discover available APs in the vicinity. However, this periodic active scanning imposes unnecessary overhead in a static WLAN environment. This paper addresses this scanning overhead issue of mobile devices in IEEE 802.11 WLANs and proposes a smart scanning method using a motion sensor. Their scheme scans channels only if the signal strength from the associated AP becomes below a specified threshold and a mobile device is moving. The smart scanning suppresses unnecessary periodic background scans.