wpa_supplicant reconnect/disconnect issues at long range

[Roger Whistlet]

Hello,
We have a device running wpa_supplicant that connects to another
device running hostapd.  When the wpa_supplicant device is getting a
bad signal, we have a problem where after it has disconnected for a
second or two it takes 5 seconds to much more to reconnect to the
hostapd device.  However, if we restart wpa_supplicant, it will
reconnect very quickly.

Since the device only connects to a single other device (with a known
ssid), is there a way we can increase the disconnect threshold so it
never actually disconnects even when the other device is way out of
range (and will still send packets/attempt to receive packets  from
it)?   We have tried setting the wireless sensitivity value via
"iwconfig wlan0 sens -65" but this is not enabled (we're using an
ath5k driver).

Thanks,
Roger