Voice Communications over WLAN on Campus: A Survey

Voice over Wireless Local Area Network (VoWLAN) technology offers significant benefits that provide wireless voice applications for universities, hospitals and enterprises. Some of these primary benefits are cost efficiency, noticeable increase in productivity rate and wirelessly accessing employees anywhere. There are two technologies that VoWLAN consist of, first is the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), while the second is the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Although, VoWLAN requires more than just a WLAN; it is in need of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to access the Internet [1, 2]. Voice call communication over Wi-Fi is another network technology that provides free calls over WLAN without the need of an ISP [3]. In this paper, we present a survey concerning voice communications over various network technologies and suggest a solution as a result of comparison between these technologies. This solution aims to provide a facility of making free voice calls that would only use WLAN technology without the need of a service provider. Using free bands of WLAN would provide no cost internal communications and would include the benefits of VoWLAN. The challenges that face deployment of this solution would be providing mobility and large coverage area. Therefore, WLAN will need to be extended by including several Access Points (APs).