METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CHANNEL ALLOCATION IN A WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORK (WLAN)

The present invention provides a method for allocating channels in a wireless local area network (WLAN) among a plurality of clients. This method involves first assigning at least one client of the plurality of clients to a channel of a set of active channels. Next, for each client the access time is determined based on an access time factor. Assigning individual clients to channels further involves determining available channel capacity of the set of active channels and the desired channel consumption of the multiple clients. When the available channel capacity is equal to or greater than the desired channel consumption, multiple clients may be assigned to multiple channels. However, when the available channel capacity is less than the desired channel consumption, the desired channel consumption of the multiple clients is scaled to produce a scaled channel consumption wherein multiple clients are assigned to channels based on the available channel capacity of each of the set of channels and the scaled channel consumption.