A Survey on Scheduling in IEEE 802.16 Mesh Mode

Cataloged from PDF version of article.IEEE 802.16 standard (also known as WiMAX) defines the wireless broadband network technology which aims to solve the so called last mile problem via providing high bandwidth Internet even to the rural areas for which the cable deployment is very costly. The standard mainly focuses on the MAC and PHY layer issues, supporting two transmission modes: PMP (Point-to-Multipoint) and mesh modes. Mesh mode is an optional mode developed as an extension to PMP mode and it has the advantage of having an improving performance as more subscribers are added to the system using multi-hop routes. In 802.16 MAC protocol, mesh mode slot allocation and reservation mechanisms are left open which makes this topic a hot research area. Hence, the focus of this survey will mostly be on the mesh mode, and the proposed scheduling algorithms and performance evaluation methods

Performance issues in cellular wireless mesh networks

This thesis proposes a potential solution for future ubiquitous broadband wireless access networks, called a cellular wireless mesh network (CMESH), and investigates a number of its performance issues. A CMESH is organized in multi-radio, multi-channel, multi-rate and multi-hop radio cells. It can operate on abundant high radio frequencies, such as 5-50 GHz, and thus may satisfy the bandwidth requirements of future ubiquitous wireless applications. Each CMESH cell has a single Internet-connected gateway and serves up to hundreds of mesh nodes within its coverage area. This thesis studies performance issues in a CMESH, focusing on cell capacity, expressed in terms of the max-min throughput. In addition to introducing the concept of a CMESH, this thesis makes the following contributions. The first contribution is a new method for analyzing theoretical cell capacity. This new method is based on a new concept called Channel Transport Capacity (CTC), and derives new analytic expressions for capacity bounds for carrier-sense-based CMESH cells. The second contribution is a new algorithm called the Maximum Channel Collision Time (MCCT) algorithm and an expression for the nominal capacity of CMESH cells. This thesis proves that the nominal cell capacity is achievable and is the exact cell capacity for small cells within the abstract models. Finally, based on the MCCT algorithm, this thesis proposes a series of greedy algorithms for channel assignment and routing in CMESH cells. Simulation results show that these greedy algorithms can significantly improve the capacity of CMESH cells, compared with algorithms proposed by other researchers

Radio Co-location Aware Channel Assignments for Interference Mitigation in Wireless Mesh Networks

Designing high performance channel assignment schemes to harness the potential of multi-radio multi-channel deployments in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is an active research domain. A pragmatic channel assignment approach strives to maximize network capacity by restraining the endemic interference and mitigating its adverse impact on network performance. Interference prevalent in WMNs is multi-faceted, radio co-location interference (RCI) being a crucial aspect that is seldom addressed in research endeavors. In this effort, we propose a set of intelligent channel assignment algorithms, which focus primarily on alleviating the RCI. These graph theoretic schemes are structurally inspired by the spatio-statistical characteristics of interference. We present the theoretical design foundations for each of the proposed algorithms, and demonstrate their potential to significantly enhance network capacity in comparison to some well-known existing schemes. We also demonstrate the adverse impact of radio co- location interference on the network, and the efficacy of the proposed schemes in successfully mitigating it. The experimental results to validate the proposed theoretical notions were obtained by running an exhaustive set of ns-3 simulations in IEEE 802.11g/n environments.Comment: Accepted @ ICACCI-201

Protocol design and optimization for QoS provisioning in wireless mesh networks

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) has been recognized as a promising step towards the goal of ubiquitous broadband wireless Internet access. By exploiting the state-of-the-art radio and multi-hop networking technologies, mesh nodes in WMN collaboratively form a stationary wireless communication backbone. Data between clients and the Internet is routed through a series of mesh nodes via one or multiple paths. Such a mesh structure enables WMN to provide clients high-speed Internet access services with a less expensive and easier-to-deployment wireless infrastructure comparing to the wired counterparts. Due to the unique characteristics of WMN, existing protocols and schemes designed for other wellstudied wireless networks, such as Wi-Fi and Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), are not suitable for WMN and hence cannot be applied to WMN directly. Therefore, novel protocols specifically designed and optimized forWMNare highly desired to fully exploit the mesh architecture. The goal is to provide high-level Quality-of-Service (QoS) to WMN clients to enable a rich portfolio of wireless and mobile applications and scenarios. This dissertation investigates the following important issues related to QoS provisioning in WMN: high throughput routing between WMN clients and the Internet, fairness provisioning among WMN clients and network-level capacity optimization. We propose innovative solutions to address these issues and improve the performance, scalability and reliability of WMN. In addition, we develop CyMesh, a multi-radio multi-channel (MRMC) wireless mesh network testbed, to evaluate the capacity and performance of WMN in real world environments. Extensive simulation (using the QualNet simulator) and experimental (over the CyMesh testbed) results demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed protocols. In particular, we learn that the system capacity of WMN can be improved significantly by exploiting the MRMC network architecture and the antenna directionality of radios equipped on mesh nodes, and our proposed fulfillment based fairness is a reasonable notion for fair service provisioning among WMN clients. Moreover, we report the encountered problems, key observations and learned lessons during the design and deployment of CyMesh, which may serve as a valuable resource for future MRMC WMN implementations