Contention-based multi access scheme of 802.11 based wireless mesh networks imposes difficulties in achieving predictable service quality in multi-hop networks. In order to offer effective advanced network services such as flow admission control or load balancing, the residual capacity of the wireless links should be accurately estimated. In this work, we propose and validate an algorithm for the residual bandwidth of wireless mesh network. By collecting transmission statistics from the nearby nodes that are one and two hops away and by using a basic collision detection mechanism, the packet delivery failure probability for a given link is estimated. The packet failure probability is used in an analytical model to calculate the maximum allowable traffic level for this link in saturation condition. We evaluate the efficacy of the method via OPNET simulations, and show that the percent estimation error is significantly lower than a recent prominent estimation method; i.e. error is between 0.5-1.5%. We demonstrate that flow admission control is successfully achieved in a realistic WMN scenario based on accurate link residual bandwidth estimates. A flow control algorithm based on residual bandwidth keeps the unsatisfied traffic demand bounded and at a negligibly low level. We also propose a routing metric that uses residual bandwidth as link metric and we show that this routing algorithm results in a significant increase in network throughput compared to other popular metrics
