MAC protocols over wireless mesh networks: problems and perspective

The wireless mesh network (WMN) has been an emerging technology in recent years. Because the transmission medium used in networking backhaul access points (APs) is radio, the wireless mesh network is not only easy and cost effective in deployment, but also has good scalability in coverage area and capacity. This paper provides an overview of distributed medium access control (MAC) protocols, discusses their features and suitability for WMNs and identifies potential challenges and open research issues. Specifically, we overview the technical medium access control of the new standard for WMNs, the mesh deployments of the IEEE 802.16 MAC and we focus on the coordinated distributed scheduling (CDS) scheme of this. Moreover, we assess the fitness of the IEEE 802.11 over wireless mesh networks. Through the study of existing solutions, we analyze the previous work and sketch the contours of the directions to achieve the throughput and the latency that must be guaranteed in WMNs. In this context we suggest future enhancements to the standard that could increase throughput, while also increase the robustness, without complexity increases and propose and evaluate a new distributed scheduling scheme (DSS). We compared the CDS and the DSS and simulations studies document and confirm the positive characteristics of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, we proposed an analytical model to assess a lower bound in terms of delay.