A Power Line Backbone-Assisted Wireless Transit Network

Power line communication (PLC) is emerging as the preferred connectivity solution to enlarge WiFi’s communication range for mobile clients. However, we have to consider the mobility in power-line assisted WiFi for a seamless mobile experience and wide connectivity. To this end, in this paper, we exploit the power line backbone to achieve seamless mobility and wide connectivity for mobile clients in a power line-assisted wireless transit network. To do so, we introduce TurboGrid that characterizes the power-line backbone and allows the network infrastructure to make performance-impacting decisions on roaming between PLC adapters. We first characterize the power line channel over time and space in the powerline infrastructure. Then, we show that the existing WiFi handover approaches cannot be directly applied when integrating power lines to assist WiFi communication. Therefore, we propose to integrate the link quality on the power line backbone with link quality over the air for seamless mobile client switching. The systematic evaluation and implementation of commodity WiFi AP and PLC adapters show the efficacy of our TurboGrid during the mobile client’s mobility.