FAST HANDOFF METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORK SYSTEM

摘要

A fast handoff method for a WLAN(Wireless LAN) system and an apparatus thereof are provided to minimize a handoff delay due to a search procedure by collecting the traffic load information of neighbor APs(Access Points) through beacon frames, broadcasted from APs, and executing handoff using the collected traffic load information. A terminal receives a beacon frame from a currently associated AP, extracts the traffic load index of the current AP from the received beacon frame, and compares the extracted traffic load index with a threshold traffic load index(S601-S605). If the extracted traffic load index is larger than the threshold traffic load index, the terminal searches for an AP having the smallest traffic load index among the traffic load indexes of neighbor APs(S607). If a new AP is selected, the terminal executes an authentication procedure with the selected AP(S609). If the authentication is successful, the terminal executes a re-association procedure(S611).