Joint Channel Assignment and Routing for Throughput Optimization in Multiradio Wireless Mesh Networks

Multihop infrastructure wireless mesh networks offer increased reliability, coverage, and reduced equipment costs over their single-hop counterpart, wireless local area networks. Equipping wireless routers with multiple radios further improves the capacity by transmitting over multiple radios simultaneously using orthogonal channels. Efficient channel assignment and routing is essential for throughput optimization of mesh clients. Efficient channel assignment schemes can greatly relieve the interference effect of close-by transmissions; effective routing schemes can alleviate potential congestion on any gateways to the Internet, thereby improving per-client throughput. Unlike previous heuristic approaches, we mathematically formulate the joint channel assignment and routing problem, taking into account the interference constraints, the number of channels in the network, and the number of radios available at each mesh router. We then use this formulation to develop a solution for our problem that optimizes the overall network throughput subject to fairness constraints on allocation of scarce wireless capacity among mobile clients. We show that the performance of our algorithms is within a constant factor of that of any optimal algorithm for the joint channel assignment and routing problem. Our evaluation demonstrates that our algorithm can effectively exploit the increased number of channels and radios, and it performs much better than the theoretical worst case bounds     

Distributed potential field based routing and autonomous load balancing for wireless mesh networks

Congested hot spots and node failures severely degrade the performance of wireless mesh networks. However, conventional routing schemes are inefficient in mitigation of the problems. Considering analogy to physics, we propose a novel distributed potential-field-based routing scheme for anycast wireless mesh networks, which is robust to sudden traffic and network perturbations, effectively balancing load among multiple gateways and mesh nodes with little control overhead. Simulation results exhibit autonomous load balancing and failure-tolerant performance in wireless mesh networking.     

Distributed Routing Based on Minimum End‐to‐End Delay for OFDMA Backhaul Mobile Mesh Networks

In this paper, an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)‐based minimum end‐to‐end delay (MED) distributed routing scheme for mobile backhaul wireless mesh networks is proposed. The proposed scheme selects routing paths based on OFDMA subcarrier synchronization control, subcarrier availability, and delay. In the proposed scheme, OFDMA is used to transmit frames between mesh routers using type‐I hybrid automatic repeat request over multipath Rayleigh fading channels. Compared with other distributed routing algorithms, such as most forward within radius R, farthest neighbor routing, nearest neighbor routing, and nearest with forwarding progress, simulation results show that the proposed MED routing can reduce end‐to‐end delay and support highly reliable routing using only local information of neighbor nodes.     

A resource-efficient and scalable wireless mesh routing protocol

By binding logic addresses to the network topology, routing can be carried out without going through route discovery. This eliminates the initial route discovery latency, saves storage space otherwise needed for routing table, and reduces the communication overhead and energy consumption. In this paper, an adaptive block addressing (ABA) scheme is first introduced for logic address assignment as well as network auto-configuration purpose. The scheme takes into account the actual network topology and thus is fully topology-adaptive. Then a distributed link state (DLS) scheme is further proposed and put on top of the block addressing scheme to improve the quality of routes, in terms of hop count or other routing cost metrics used, robustness, and load balancing. The network topology reflected in logic addresses is used as a guideline to tell towards which direction (rather than next hop) a packet should be relayed. The next hop is derived from each relaying node’s local link state table. The routing scheme, named as topology-guided DLS (TDLS) as a whole, scales well with regard to various performance metrics. The ability of TDLS to provide multiple paths also precludes the need for explicit route repair, which is the most complicated part in many wireless routing protocols. While this paper targets low rate wireless mesh personal area networks (LR-WMPANs), including wireless mesh sensor networks (WMSNs), the TDLS itself is a general scheme and can be applied to other non-mobile wireless mesh networks.     

Network-coding-based scheduling and routing schemes for service-oriented wireless mesh networks - [Service-oriented broadband wireless network architecture]

Service-oriented wireless mesh networks have recently been receiving intensive attention as a pivotal component to implement the concept of ubiquitous computing due to their easy and cost-effective deployment. To deliver a variety of services to subscriber stations, a large volume of traffic is exchanged via mesh routers in the mesh backbone network. One of the critical problems in service-oriented wireless mesh networks is to improve the network throughput. Wireless network coding is a key technology to improve network throughput in multihop wireless networks since it can exploit not only the broadcast nature of the wireless channel, but also the native physical-layer coding ability by mixing simultaneously arriving radio waves at relay nodes. We first analyze the throughput improvement obtained by wireless network coding schemes in wireless mesh networks. Then we develop a heuristic joint link scheduling, channel assignment, and routing algorithm that can improve the network throughput for service-oriented wireless mesh networks. Our extensive simulations show that wireless network coding schemes can improve network throughput by 34 percent.     

An efficient cooperative hybrid routing protocol for hybrid wireless mesh networks

Hybrid wireless mesh networks are the most generic types of wireless mesh networks. Unlike static mesh routers, which have multiple radio interfaces and almost no energy constraint, mobile mesh clients are usually equipped with a single radio interface and have energy limitations. A cooperative hybrid routing protocol (CHRP) combining advantages of proactive and reactive routing protocols by letting them work cooperatively is proposed in this paper, which can adapt to features of both routers and clients. In CHRP, in order to make a proper route selection, channel condition, interference and constrained energy of clients are considered in the node-aware routing metric. Besides, a cross-layer approach is used in CHRP. Both gateway and client oriented data flows are considered comprehensively. The simulation results using ns-3 show the advantage of the proposed CHRP in terms of average packet loss rate, average latency, average network throughput, average energy consumption of clients and the minimum residual energy of clients.     

Single-path routing for life time maximization in multi-hop wireless networks

Energy-aware routing is important in multi-hop wireless networks that are powered by battery, e.g., wireless sensor networks. To maximize the network survivability, the energy efficiency of paths must be taken into account for route selection. Simple heuristics such as choosing paths with minimal energy consumption are ineffective, because the energy of the nodes on such paths may deplete quickly. The issue is particularly serious for the networks with regular traffic pattern as in monitoring sensor applications. Existing solutions to this issue typically adopt the multi-path routing approach, in which multiple paths are set up between source and destination and one (or all) of the paths is (are) used at a certain moment. However, this approach involves high overhead for establishment and management of multiple paths. In this paper, we present a static single-path routing scheme which uses one energy-efficient path for each communicating peer throughout the network lifetime, eliminating the overhead of multi-path routing. It is theoretically proved that our routing scheme achieves a constant factor approximate of the optimal solution. We compare the performance of the proposed scheme with that of multi-path routing via simulations. Despite the use of single static path, the proposed scheme outperforms existing multi-path routing schemes and produces performance close to the optimal multi-path solution, particularly in heavily loaded networks and multiple-gateway networks.     

A Cross-Layer Optimization Framework for Multihop Multicast in Wireless Mesh Networks

The optimal and distributed provisioning of high throughput in mesh networks is known as a fundamental but hard problem. The situation is exacerbated in a wireless setting due to the interference among local wireless transmissions. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer optimization framework for throughput maximization in wireless mesh networks, in which the data routing problem and the wireless medium contention problem are jointly optimized for multihop multicast. We show that the throughput maximization problem can be decomposed into two subproblems: a data routing subproblem at the network layer, and a power control subproblem at the physical layer with a set of Lagrangian dual variables coordinating interlayer coupling. Various effective solutions are discussed for each subproblem. We emphasize the network coding technique for multicast routing and a game theoretic method for interference management, for which efficient and distributed solutions are derived and illustrated. Finally, we show that the proposed framework can be extended to take into account physical-layer wireless multicast in mesh networks     

无线Mesh网路由协议仿真及性能分析

当前对无线网格网络（Mesh网络）主要研究之一是无线路由技术,即针对无线Mesh网络自身的特点进行路由设计。在熟悉基于Linux平台的网络仿真器（NS2）针对Mesh网络路由协议的仿真过程的基础上,利用NS2网络仿真软件分别从端到端平均时延、分组递交率、归一化路由开销三个方面比较了目前三种典型的路由协议——按需平面距离矢量路由（AODV）、动态源路由（DSR）和目的序列距离矢量路由（DSDV）的性能,并详细介绍了整个仿真过程的步骤。最后,通过分析AODV协议的吞吐量,得出网络最佳容纳的节点数,研究成果对协议的实现具有重要的应用价值。     

Routing and transmission scheduling for minimizing broadcast delay in multirate wireless mesh networks using directional antennas

Using directional antennas to reduce interference and improve throughput in multihop wireless networks has attracted much attention from the research community in recent years. In this paper, we consider the issue of minimum delay broadcast in multirate wireless mesh networks using directional antennas. We are given a set of mesh routers equipped with directional antennas, one of which is the gateway node and the source of the broadcast. Our objective is to minimize the total transmission delay for all the other nodes to receive a broadcast packet from the source, by determining the set of relay nodes and computing the number and orientations of beams formed by each relay node. We propose a heuristic solution with two steps. Firstly, we construct a broadcast routing tree by defining a new routing metric to select the relay nodes and compute the optimal antenna beams for each relay node. Then, we use a greedy method to make scheduling of concurrent transmissions without causing beam interference. Extensive simulations have demonstrated that our proposed method can reduce the broadcast delay significantly compared with the methods using omnidirectional antennas and single‐rate transmission. In addition, the results also show that our method performs better than the method with fixed antenna beams. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Distributed Virtual Backbone Development Scheme for Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks

The virtual backbone is an approach for solving routing problems in ad-hoc wireless networks. The virtual backbone approach features low latency, moderate routing overhead and is a hybrid scheme that uses the table-driven and on-demand routing protocols. This work presents a distributed virtual backbone development scheme for ad-hoc wireless networks. Using clustering, distributed labeling and heuristic Steiner tree techniques, our scheme outperforms other schemes in terms of the size and stability of the virtual backbone and the virtual backbone change rate. Experimental results demonstrate that our scheme has lower overhead than traditional table-driven and on-demand routing schemes. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Robust Routing and Scheduling in Wireless Mesh Networks under Dynamic Traffic Conditions

Joint routing-and-scheduling has been considered in wireless mesh networks for its significant performance improvement. While existing work assumes it, accurate traffic information is usually not available due to traffic dynamics, as well as inaccuracy and delay in its measurement and dissemination. In addition, the joint routing and scheduling usually requires a centralized controller to calculate the optimal routing and scheduling and distribute such policies to all the nodes. Thus, even if the accurate traffic information is always available, the central controller has to compute the routing and scheduling repeatedly because the traffic demands change continuously. This leads to prohibitive computation and distribution overhead. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a joint routing-scheduling scheme that achieves robust performance under traffic information uncertainty. In particular, it achieves worst-case optimal performance under a range of traffic conditions. This unique feature validates the use of centralized routing and scheduling in wireless mesh networks. As long as the traffic variation is within the estimation range, the routing and scheduling do not need to be recomputed and redistributed. Through extensive simulations, we show that our proposed scheme meets the objective (i.e., optimizes the worst-case performance). Moreover, although it only guarantees the worst-case performance in theory, its average performance is also good. For example, our proposed scheme can perform better than a fixed optimal routing and scheduling scheme in more than 80 percent of 500 random traffic instances. Our scheme provides insights on the desired properties of multipath routing, namely, spatial reuse and load balancing.     

Joint Power-Frequency-Time Resource Allocation in Clustered Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networking is an emerging technology for future broadband wireless access. Future wireless networking can benefit from a robust and reliable wireless mesh backbone rendered by mesh routers, providing an all-wireless ambience. Due to the requisite multichannel communications for high-speed data transmissions, power allocation for opportunistically exploiting fading wireless channels, and packet scheduling for QoS provisioning, joint power-frequency-time resource allocation is indispensable. In this article we propose a low-complexity intracluster resource allocation algorithm, taking power allocation, subcarrier allocation, and packet scheduling into consideration. Numerical results demonstrate that our scheme is near optimal, and that our optimality-driven resource allocation approach outperforms a greedy algorithm, working out a better performance compromise among throughput, packet dropping rate, and packet delay.     

Design of the QoS framework for the IEEE 802.16 mesh networks

IEEE 802.16 (WiMax) technology is designed to support broadband speeds over wireless networks for the coming era of broadband wireless access (BWA). IEEE 802.16 is expected to provide transmission of high‐rate and high‐volume multimedia data streams for fixed and mobile applications. As an extension of point‐to‐multipoint (PMP) configuration, the IEEE 802.16 mesh mode provides a quicker and more flexible approach for network deployment. Multimedia networking requires quality‐of‐service (QoS) support, which demands elaborate mechanisms in addition to the four service types defined in the specification. By examining standard centralized and distributed scheduling/routing schemes in the mesh mode from QoS aspect, a BS‐controlled and delay‐sensitive scheduling/routing scheme is proposed in the paper. Associate mechanisms including admission control, flow setup and link state monitoring are also proposed. Integration of the proposed mechanisms is presented as a complete QoS framework. Simulation study has demonstrated that the average delay as well as the delay jitters per hop in the proposed scheme is smaller than that of the distributed scheme and much smaller than that of the centralized scheme. Furthermore, proposed mechanisms can also achieve higher throughput than the contrasts and generate much smaller signaling overhead, making the proposed framework a promising scheme for multimedia support in the IEEE 802.16 mesh network. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mesh IP Video Surveillance Systems Model Design and Performance Evaluation

This paper proposes a model for Internet Protocol (IP) mesh video surveillance systems and presents the performance evaluation of Ah-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocols in wireless mesh video surveillance system. A wireless mesh video surveillance network consists of IP cameras linked to mesh routers which are then linked to the mesh gateways. Local monitoring can be done by inserting a switch or router between the gateways and the Internet while remote monitoring can be done through the Internet. Routing provides selection, constructing and management of routes in order to maximize throughput and minimize video packet losses, end-to-end delays and Jitter. Results show that the OSPF routing protocol outperformed the AODV in throughput, packet loss, end-to- end delay and Jitter terms with a throughput advantage of 35%.     

Reinforcement learning based routing in wireless mesh networks

This paper addresses the problem of efficient routing in backbone wireless mesh networks (WMNs) where each mesh router is equipped with multiple radio interfaces and a subset of nodes serve as gateways to the Internet. Most routing schemes have been designed to reduce routing costs by optimizing one metric, e.g., hop count and interference ratio. However, when considering these metrics together, the complexity of the routing problem increases drastically. Thus, an efficient and adaptive routing scheme that takes into account several metrics simultaneously and considers traffic congestion around the gateways is needed. In this paper, we propose an adaptive scheme for routing traffic in WMNs, called Reinforcement Learning-based Distributed Routing (RLBDR), that (1) considers the critical areas around the gateways where mesh routers are much more likely to become congested and (2) adaptively learns an optimal routing policy taking into account multiple metrics, such as loss ratio, interference ratio, load at the gateways and end-to end delay. Simulation results show that RLBDR can significantly improve the overall network performance compared to schemes using either Metric of Interference and Channel switching, Best Path to Best Gateway, Expected Transmission count, nearest gateway (i.e., shortest path to gateway) or load at gateways as a metric for path selection.     

Star-Structure Network Coding for Multiple Unicast Sessions in Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, first, we propose Star-NC, a new network coding (NC) scheme for multiple unicast sessions in an n-input n-output star structure. Then, we evaluate the network throughput of this coding scheme in wireless mesh network over the traditional non-NC transmission. Our scheme benefits from the proximity of all the nodes around the relay node and employs a more general form of overhearing different from other schemes such as COPE. We found that the gain of our NC scheme depends on both the star size and the routing pattern of the unicast transmissions. Based on this, we identify both the situations which the maximum gain is achievable and a lower bound for the expected value of the gain in the case of random routing pattern. Next, we propose an analytical framework for studying throughput gain of our Star-NC scheme in general wireless network topologies. Our theoretical formulation via linear programming provides a method for finding source-destination routes and utilizing the best choices of our NC scheme to maximize the throughput. Finally, we evaluate our model for various networks, traffic models and routing strategies over coding-oblivious routing. We also compare the throughput gain of our scheme with COPE-type NC scheme. We show that Star-NC exploits new coding opportunities different from COPE-type NC and thus can be used with or without this scheme. The results show that Star-NC has often better performance than COPE for a directional traffic model which is a typical model in wireless mesh networks. Moreover, we found that, joint Star and COPE-type NC has better throughput performance than each of Star or COPE alone.     

Comparison of two routing metrics in OLSR on a grid based mesh network

Predicting the performance of ad hoc networking protocols for mesh networks has typically been performed by making use of software based simulation tools. Experimental study and validation of such predictions is a vital to obtaining more realistic results, but may not be possible under the constrained environment of network simulators. This paper presents an experimental comparison of OLSR using the standard hysteresis routing metric and the ETX metric in a 7 by 7 grid of closely spaced Wi-Fi nodes to obtain more realistic results. The wireless grid is first modelled to extract its ability to emulate a real world multi-hop ad hoc network. This is followed by a detailed analysis of OLSR in terms of hop count, routing traffic overhead, throughput, delay, packet loss and route flapping in the wireless grid using the hysteresis and ETX routing metric. It was discovered that the ETX metric which has been extensively used in mesh networks around the world is fundamentally flawed when estimating optimal routes in real mesh networks and that the less sophisticated hysteresis metric shows better performance in large dense mesh networks.     

A reliable overlay video transport protocol for multicast agents in wireless mesh networks

A new video transport protocol for multicast agents in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is proposed in this paper. The proposed protocol enables a significant reduction in the transmission overhead, while providing reliable communication for its use in multicast applications. This proposed reliable protocol provides a practical approach for an overlay peer‐to‐peer multicast facility supported within the application layer. This obviates the need to give upgraded routers capable of handling multicast broadcasting or modify the existing protocol stack. The protocol tolerates partial losses in multimedia transmissions, while supporting control of the delay sensitivity of such transmissions in WMNs. The key issue in this protocol is the ability to detect packet loss, anticipate retransmission requests, and use the anticipated retransmission requests to transmit the lost packets prior to requests from other receiving agents. The proposed protocol allows for the receiver to determine if retransmission of lost packets is required, ensuring the greatest flexibility needed for a reliable multicast protocol. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A ring-based multicast routing topology with QoS support in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networking (WMN) is an emerging technology for future broadband wireless access. The proliferation of the mobile computing devices that are equipped with cameras and ad hoc communication mode creates the possibility of exchanging real-time data between mobile users in wireless mesh networks. In this paper, we argue for a ring-based multicast routing topology with support from infrastructure nodes for group communications in WMNs. We study the performance of multicast communication over a ring routing topology when 802.11 with RTS/CTS scheme is used at the MAC layer to enable reliable multicast services in WMNs. We propose an algorithm to enhance the IP multicast routing on the ring topology. We show that when mesh routers on a ring topology support group communications by employing our proposed algorithms, a significant performance enhancement is realized. We analytically compute the end-to-end delay on a ring multicast routing topology. Our results show that the end-to-end delay is reduced about 33 %, and the capacity of multicast network (i.e., maximum group size that the ring can serve with QoS guarantees) is increased about 50 % as compared to conventional schemes. We also use our analytical results to develop heuristic algorithms for constructing an efficient ring-based multicast routing topology with QoS guarantees. The proposed algorithms take into account all possible traffic interference when constructing the multicast ring topology. Thus, the constructed ring topology provides QoS guarantees for the multicast traffic and minimizes the cost of group communications in WMNs.