Understanding Traffic Load in Software Defined WiFi Networks for Healthcare

Software Defined WiFi network (SD-WiFi) is a new paradigm that brings programmability into WiFi networks by introducing a centralized network control. SD-WiFi provides access to numerous internet applications such as Video, FTP, HTTP etc. The growth of wireless devices has led to enormous peaks in traffic load especially in health care sector. Understanding load and its relationship to QoS parameters at physical and MAC layers in SD-WiFi still remains an issue. This paper presents a suitable wireless load definition and analyzes the SD-WiFi performance by varying the load conditions. Extensive simulations have been performed to study the performance metrics such as packet loss and latency, through an OpenFlow enabled access point (AP), by changing packet payload and packet generation times. This study can serve as a basis to optimize SD-WiFi and configure parameters for real time applications.