Towards a Smart Environment: Optimization of WLAN Technologies to Enable Concurrent Smart Services

In this research paper, the spatial distributions of five different services—Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Video Conferencing (VC), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Electronic Mail—are investigated using three different approaches: circular, random, and uniform approaches. The amount of each service varies from one to another. In certain distinct settings, which are collectively referred to as mixed applications, a variety of services are activated and configured at predetermined percentages. These services run simultaneously. Furthermore, this paper has established a new algorithm to assess both the real-time and best-effort services of the various IEEE 802.11 technologies, describing the best networking architecture as either a Basic Service Set (BSS), an Extended Service Set (ESS), or an Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS). Due to this fact, the purpose of our research is to provide the user or client with an analysis that suggests a suitable technology and network configuration without wasting resources on unnecessary technologies or requiring a complete re-setup. In this context, this paper presents a network prioritization framework for enabling smart environments to determine an appropriate WLAN standard or a combination of standards that best supports a specific set of smart network applications in a specified environment. A network QoS modeling technique for smart services has been derived for assessing best-effort HTTP and FTP, and the real-time performance of VoIP and VC services enabled via IEEE 802.11 protocols in order to discover more optimal network architecture. A number of IEEE 802.11 technologies have been ranked by using the proposed network optimization technique with separate case studies for the circular, random, and uniform geographical distributions of smart services. The performance of the proposed framework is validated using a realistic smart environment simulation setting, considering both real-time and best-effort services as case studies with a range of metrics related to smart environments.