A group-based channel assignment protocol for rate separation in IEEE 802.11-based multi-radio multi-rate ad hoc networks

Today’s IEEE 802.11 devices support multiple channels and data rates. Utilizing multiple channels and data rates can increase the performance of IEEE 802.11 networks. However, the multi-channel design to exploit available channels is one of the challenging issues. Moreover, performance anomaly occurs in IEEE 802.11 multi-rate networks when high-rate and low-rate links share a common channel, which degrades the overall network capacity significantly. In this paper, we introduce an extension of conflict graph, called rate conflict graph (RCG), to understand the performance anomaly problem in IEEE 802.11 multi-rate networks. Then, we propose a group-based channel assignment (GCA) protocol for IEEE 802.11-based multi-radio multi-rate single-hop ad hoc networks. In GCA, each node is equipped with multiple IEEE 802.11 interfaces, and links are subdivided into multiple groups, called component groups, by obeying the interface constraints. Then, GCA utilizes RCG and a heuristic algorithm to separate different data rate links via multiple channels so that the performance anomaly problem is addressed. Our extensive simulation results reveal that GCA achieves improved performance over existing channel assignment protocols designed to consider performance anomaly.     

Relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11, the rate of a station (STA) is dynamically determined by link adaptation. Low-rate STAs tend to hog more channel time than high-rate STAs due to fair characteristics of carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance, leading to overall throughput degradation. It can be improved by limiting the transmission opportunities of low-rate STAs by backoff parameters. This, however, may cause unfair transmission opportunities to low-rate STAs. In an attempt to increase overall throughput by volunteer high-rate relay STAs while maintaining fairness, we propose a new cooperative medium access control (MAC) protocol, relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC (RM-CMAC) based on ready to send/clear to send in multi-rate IEEE 802.11. In the RM-CMAC protocol, we show that the effect of hogging channel time by low-rate STAs can be remedied by controlling the initial backoff window size of low-rate STAs and the reduced transmission opportunity of low-rate STAs can be compensated by the help of volunteer high-rate relay STAs. We analyze the performance of RM-CMAC, i.e., throughput and MAC delay, by a multi-rate embedded Markov chain model. We demonstrate that our analysis is accurate and the RM-CMAC protocol enhances the network throughput and MAC delay while maintaining the fairness of low-rate STAs.     

Feasibility of optimally assigning channels by exhaustive search in commercial multi-radio wireless mesh networks

Channel assignment problems in multi-radio wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been shown to be NP-hard in various scenarios in the literature. By far, most of research efforts have focused on developing efficient approximation algorithms that run reasonably fast and provide good quality channel assignment rather than the optimal one. However, from the practical network design and deployment standpoint, engineers care more about whether it is feasible to optimally assign channels in the simplest way (i.e., exhaustive search), as most of existing commercial WMNs are of small/medium scale. In this paper, we attempt to answer this practical question. We study the complexity of general channel assignment problems with certain basic and common properties. The results show that the complexity in terms of the number of different possible assignments is exponential in the number of wireless links. Furthermore, we estimate the theoretical runtime of determining the optimal channel assignment by exhaustive search and validate it through experiments. We show that, given certain computing power (e.g., an off-the-shelf notebook PC), it is feasible to optimally solve channel assignment problems in small-scale and medium-scale commercial multi-radio WMNs. In other words, approximation algorithms are not needed for most of current commercial WMNs.     

On a joint temporal-spatial multi-channel assignment and routing scheme in resource-constrained wireless mesh networks

Use of multiple orthogonal channels can significantly improve network throughput of multi-hop wireless mesh networks (WMNs). In these WMNs where multiple channels are available, channel assignment is done either in a centralized manner, which unfortunately shows a poor scalability with respect to the increase of network size, or in a distributed manner, where at least one channel has to be dedicated for exchanging necessary control messages or time synchronization has to be utilized for managing the duration of data packet transmission, causing excessive system overhead and waste of bandwidth resource. In this paper, we first formulate multi-channel assignment as a NP-hard optimization problem. Then a distributed, heuristic temporal-spatial multi-channel assignment and routing scheme is proposed, assuming every wireless node in the network is equipped with a single-radio interface. Here the gateway node is set to use all the channels sequentially in a round-robin fashion. This temporal scheme ensures all the nodes that need to directly communicate with the gateway node shall have a fair access to it. For those non-gateway nodes, a spatial scheme where channels are assigned based on their neighbors’ channel usage is adopted to exploit parallel communications and avoid channel interference among nodes. Furthermore, since the routing factors, including channel usage of neighbor nodes, node hop count, node memory size, and node communication history, are all considered along with the channel assignment, network performance, measured by packet delivery latency, channel usage ratio, and memory usage ratio, tends to be considerably enhanced. The simulation results have confirmed that, compared with a couple of well-known multi-channel assignment schemes, such as LCM [21] and ROMA [15], the proposed scheme shows substantial improvement in network throughput with a very modest collision level. In addition, the proposed scheme is highly scalable as the algorithm complexity is only linearly dependent on the total number of channels that are available in the network and the number of neighbors that a network node directly connects to.     

A Cross-layer Approach to Channel Assignment in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

To improve the capacity of wireless ad hoc networks by exploiting multiple available channels, we propose a distributed channel assignment protocol that is based on a cross-layer approach. By combining channel assignment with routing protocols, the proposed channel assignment protocol is shown to require fewer channels and exhibit lower communication, computation, and storage complexity than existing channel assignment schemes. A multi-channel MAC (MC-MAC) protocol that works with the proposed channel assignment protocol is also presented. We prove the correctness of the proposed channel assignment protocol. In addition, through a performance study, we show that the proposed protocol can substantially increase throughput and reduce delay in wireless ad hoc networks, compared to the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol and an existing multi-channel scheme.

An efficient channel assignment algorithm for multicast wireless mesh networks

Multicast can enhance the performance of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) effectively, which has attracted great attentions in recent years. However, multicast communication in WMNs requires efficient channel assignment strategy to reduce the total network interference and maximize the network throughput. In this paper, the concept of local multicast is proposed to measure interference and solve hidden channel problem in multicast communication. Basing on the concept, we propose a channel assignment algorithm considering the interference of local multicast and forwarding weight of each node (LMFW). The algorithm fully considers partially overlapped channels and orthogonal channels to improve the network performance. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm can reduce interference and improve network capacity of WMNs.     

On-demand routing and channel assignment in multi-channel mobile ad hoc networks

The capacity of mobile ad hoc networks is constrained by the intra-flow interference introduced by adjacent nodes on the same path, and inter-flow interference generated by nodes from neighboring paths. By assigning orthogonal channels to neighboring nodes, one can minimize both types of interferences and allow concurrent transmissions within the neighborhood, thus improving the throughput and delay performance of the ad hoc network. In this paper, we present three novel distributed channel assignment protocols for multi-channel mobile ad hoc networks. The proposed protocols combine channel assignment with distributed on-demand routing, and only assign channels to active nodes. They are shown to require fewer channels and exhibit lower communication, computation, and storage complexity, compared with existing approaches. Through simulation studies, we show that the proposed protocols can effectively increase throughput and reduce delay, as compared to several existing schemes, thus providing an effective solution to the low capacity problem in multi-hop wireless networks.     

Efficient rate allocation,routing and channel assignment in wireless mesh networks supporting dynamic traffic flows

In this paper we address the issue of joint routing, channel re-assignment and rate allocation in multi-radio multi-channel Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) with the goal of optimizing the performance of the current set of flows in the WMN. The objective is to balance the instantaneous traffic in the network at the flow level, optimize link-channel assignment and allocate flow rates to achieve proportional fairness given the current traffic and network constraints, including the topology, interference characteristics, number of available channels and radios. Unlike prior work, we do not assume a priori knowledge of traffic, and instead take into account the instantaneous traffic conditions to optimize performance at the flow level, taking both throughput and fairness into account. In this work we analyze the problem and, due to its hardness, propose a fast heuristic algorithm (JRCAR) to solve it. We evaluate this algorithm through numerical experiments, including comparisons against optimal solutions. In addition, we show that JRCAR can be used in a highly responsive system in practical scenarios with time-varying traffic conditions. We implement such a system under the ns-3 simulator, where the simulation results obtained corroborate the behavior observed in the numerical experiments and show that JRCAR is effective in dynamic and practical conditions.     

Joint multi-radio multi-channel assignment, scheduling, and routing in wireless mesh networks

The IEEE 802.11 DCF and EDCA mechanisms based on CSMA/CA are the most widely used random channel access mechanisms in wireless mesh networks (WMNs), but unfortunately these cannot effectively eliminate hidden terminal and exposed terminal problems in multi-hop scenarios. In this paper, we propose a set of efficient multi-radio multi-channel (MRMC) assignment, scheduling and routing protocols based on Latin squares for WMNs with MRMC communication capabilities, called “M4”, i.e., the Multiple access scheduling in Multi-radio Multi-channel Mesh networking. M4 uses nodal interference information to form cliques for inter-cluster and intra-cluster inWMNs, and then applies Latin squares to map the clique-based clustering structure to radios and channels for communication purposes. Then, M4 again applies Latin squares to schedule the channel access among nodes within each cluster in a collision-free manner. From a systematic view, we also design the corresponding MRMC routing to support M4 communication. Extensive simulation results show that M4 achieves much better performance than IEEE 802.11 standards and other channel access control protocols.     

CLEAR: A Cross-Layer Enhanced and Adaptive Routing Framework for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) provide a new and promising solution for broadband Internet services. The distinguishing features and the wide range of WMNs’ applications have attracted both academic and industrial communities. Routing protocols play a crucial role in the functionality and the performance of WMNs due to their direct effect on network throughput, connectivity, supported Quality of Service (QoS) levels, etc. In this paper, a cross-layer based routing framework for multi-interface/multi-channel WMNs, called Cross-Layer Enhanced and Adaptive Routing (CLEAR), is proposed. This framework embodies optimal as well as heuristic solutions. The major component of CLEAR is a new bio-inspired routing protocol called Birds’ Migration Routing protocol (BMR). BMR adopts a newly developed routing metric called Multi-Level Routing metric (MLR) to efficiently utilize the advantages of both multi-radio/multi-channel WMNs and cross-layer design. We also provide an exact solution based on dynamic programming to solve the optimal routing problem in WMNs. Simulation results show that our framework outperforms other routing schemes in terms of network throughput, end-to-end delay, and interference reduction, in addition to being the closest one to the optimal solution.     

A Relay-Aided Media Access (RAMA) Protocol in Multirate Wireless Networks

The IEEE 802.11 standard inherently supports multiple data rates at the physical layer. Various rate adaptation mechanisms have been proposed to exploit this multirate capability by automatically adapting the transmission rate to best utilize the wireless spectrum. This study is primarily motivated by the observation that in a wireless network, a multihop high-rate path can potentially achieve better throughput and delay than using a single-hop low-rate path for transmission. Specifically, this paper introduces a relay-aided media access (RAMA) protocol by taking advantage of the existence of such multihop high-rate links. This is demonstrated by replacing one low-rate link with two high-rate links using a relay node. One of the key novelties in the proposed RAMA protocol is that the transmission from the immediate relay node to the destination node is free of contention. Results from analysis and simulations show that RAMA can significantly improve performances in terms of both throughput and delay.     

Distributed multichannel assignment with congestion control in wireless mesh networks

In Multichannel Wireless Mesh Network architecture, topology discovery, traffic profiling, channel assignment and routing are essential. From the existing work done so far, we can observe that no work has been carried out on the combined solution of multichannel assignment with routing protocol and congestion control. In this paper, we propose to design a Distributed Multichannel Assignment with Congestion control (DMAC) routing protocol. In this protocol, a traffic‐aware metric provides the solution for multichannel assignment and congestion control. Hence, the proposed protocol can improve the throughput and channel utilization to a very high extent. The proposed algorithm avoids self‐interference by not assigning a channel to any link whose incident links have already been assigned channels. By our simulation results, we show that our proposed protocol attains high throughput and delivery ratio along with reduced delay. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On energy‐efficient performance‐guaranteed channel assignment in cognitive radio‐based wireless mesh networks

In recent years, in order to make efficient use of spectrum resources, much attention has been given to solving the problem of channel assignment in cognitive radio‐based wireless mesh networks (CR‐WMNs). Current approaches focus mainly on avoiding interference in order to enhance performance in terms of throughput. WMNs are intended to provide low‐cost multimedia communication. Therefore, in order to provide low‐cost real‐time communication, channel assignment in CR‐WMNs should take into consideration not only the issue of throughput, but also energy consumption and delays. In this paper, we first define an optimization problem to maximize the end‐to‐end throughput per unit of energy consumption while minimizing, as well as guaranteeing, the delay constraint specified for a data stream. Based on this, we then propose a novel distributive heuristic channel assignment approach to solve the optimization problem in a self‐organized manner. Finally, we present the simulation results to evaluate the performance of the proposed solution in terms of end‐to‐end throughput per unit of energy consumption and delays. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

DMesh: Incorporating Practical Directional Antennas in Multichannel Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been proposed as an effective solution for ubiquitous last-mile broadband access. Three key factors that affect the usability of WMNs are high throughput, cost-effectiveness, and ease of deployability. In this paper, we propose DMesh, a WMN architecture that combines spatial separation from directional antennas with frequency separation from orthogonal channels to improve the throughput of WMNs. DMesh achieves this improvement without inhibiting cost-effectiveness and ease of deployability by utilizing practical directional antennas that are widely and cheaply available (e.g., patch and yagi) in contrast to costly and bulky smart beamforming directional antennas. Thus, the key challenge in DMesh is to exploit spatial separation from such practical directional antennas despite their lack of electronic steerability and interference nulling, as well as the presence of significant sidelobes and backlobes. In this paper, we study how such practical directional antennas can improve the throughput of a WMN. Central to our architecture is a distributed, directional channel assignment algorithm for mesh routers that effectively exploits the spatial and frequency separation opportunities in a DMesh network. Simulation results show that DMesh improves the throughput of WMNs by up to 231% and reduces packet delay drastically compared to a multiradio multichannel omni antenna network. A DMesh implementation in our 16-node 802.11b WMN testbed using commercially available practical directional antennas provides transmission control protocol throughput gains ranging from 31% to 57%     

Distributed Contention-Aware Call Admission Control for IEEE 802.11 Multi-Radio Multi-Rate Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, we focus on call admission control (CAC) in IEEE 802.11 multi-radio multi-rate multi-channel (MR²-MC) wireless mesh networks (WMNs). CAC is the key component of QoS routing protocols. The goal of CAC is to protect existing flows from QoS violations and fully utilize available radio resource on channels. We propose a CAC mechanism, called Contention-Aware Multi-channel Call Admission Control (CMC), for MR²-MC WMNs based on IEEE 802.11 DCF. CMC is fully distributed, relies on local information to estimate the residual bandwidth of a path, and can be integrated into existing routing protocols for MR²-MC WMNs to provide QoS. We evaluate the performance of CMC via ns-2 simulations. The results show that CMC can precisely predict the end-to-end residual bandwidths of paths, successfully protects existing flows from QoS violations, and fully utilizes the bandwidths on channels.     

Fairness-oriented routing algorithm joint with power control and channel assignment for multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks

The multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh network （MRMC-WMN） draws general attention because of its excellent throughput performance, robustness and relative low cost. The closed interactions among power control （PC）, channel assignment （CA） and routing is contributed to the performance of multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks （MRMC-WMNs）. However, the joint PC, CA and routing （JPCR） design, desired to achieve a global optimization, was poor addressed. The authors present a routing algorithm joint with PC and CA （JPCRA） to seek the routing, power and channel scheme for each flow, which can improve the fairness performance. Firstly, considering available channels and power levels, the routing metric, called minimum flow rate, is designed based on the physical interference and Shannon channel models. The JPCRA is presented based on the genetic algorithm （GA） with simulated annealing to maximize the minimum flow rate, an non-deterministic polynomial-time hard （NP-Hard） problem. Simulations show the JPCRA obtains better fairness among different flows and higher network throughput.     

Route selection in IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks

This paper addresses the problem of route selection in IEEE 802.11 based Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). Traditional routing protocols choose the shortest path between two routers. However, recent research reveals that there can be enormous differences between links in terms of quality (link loss ratio, interference, noise etc) and therefore selecting the shortest path (hop count metric) is a poor choice. We propose a novel routing metric—Expected Link Performance (ELP) metric for wireless mesh networks which takes into consideration multiple factors pertaining to quality (link loss ratio, link capacity and link interference) to select the best end-to-end route. Simulation based performance evaluation of ELP against contemporary routing metrics shows an improvement in terms of throughput and delay. Moreover, we propose an extension of the metric called ELP-Gateway Selection (ELP-GS) which is an extension meant for traffic specifically oriented towards the gateway nodes in the mesh network. We also propose a gateway discovery protocol which facilitates the dissemination of ELP-GS in the network. Simulation results for ELP-GS show substantial improvement in performance.     

High throughput reactive routing in multi-rate ad hoc networks

A reactive routing algorithm for multi-rate ad hoc wireless networks is proposed. It enhances the AODV protocol and achieves higher throughput by utilising the multi-rate capability of the underlying wireless channel via the MAC delay routing metric. Simulations show that the protocol leads to a significant throughput increase over traditional ad hoc routing protocols.     

无线Mesh网络集中式信道分配算法设计

以集中式无线Mesh网络(WMN)为基础,分析和研究了传统多信道分配算法,并在此基础上提出了以节点优先级和分组为特点的多接口多信道分配算法(Channel Assignment based on Rank of Node and Link group,CAR-NL),该算法结合节点分级和链路负载预期评估机制,通过节点链路分组按级分配信道。通过仿真实验表明,该算法能有效提高无线Mesh网络多业务流并发执行时系统整体吞吐量,并实现较低的丢包率。     

Stable‐path multi‐channel routing with extended level channel assignment

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have gained considerable popularity in recent times thanks to their self‐healing, self‐organizing, and self‐configuring nature. Because of their ability to provide high throughput and minimum packet delay, WMNs are considered to be favorable for broadband applications. For such applications, WMNs employ multiple channels, which give rise to issues like channel assignment, load balancing, and interference avoidance. Most of these issues fall into two broad categories, namely routing and channel assignment. For routing, we propose a novel proactive protocol, the stable‐path multi‐channel routing protocol (SMRP). Our proposed solution, to address channel assignment, is the extended level‐based channel assignment (ELCA) scheme. SMRP is designed to work in combination with ELCA in order to minimize interference and balance the load among the underlying nodes. Simulation results show enhanced throughput and minimal packet delay as compared with the contemporary schemes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.