In this paper, we discuss several important issues in the hybrid wireless mesh network.
1) The system architecture: as each mesh node contains both static and dynamic interfaces, we discuss on how to coordinate the channel assignment between both types of interfaces, so that the channel resources could be utilized efficiently.
2) We propose an Adaptive Dynamic Channel Allocation protocol (ADCA), which considers both throughput and delay in the channel assignment. ADCA is able to reduce the packet delay without degrading the network throughput.
3) Routing decision in the network: Multihop wireless mesh networks are an attractive solution for providing last-mile connectivity. However, the shared nature of the transmission medium makes it challenging to fully exploit these networks. Nodes interfere with each other, resulting in packet loss and degraded network performance. In this paper, a routing metric specifically designed for WMNs is proposed.
The Interference-Aware Routing metric (IAR) uses MAC-level information to measure the share of the channel that each link is able to utilize effectively. As a result, paths are selected that exhibit the least interference. Simulations show that utilizing this metric provides significant performance improvements in terms of end-to-end delay at balancing the channel usage over the network and thus improve the network throughput. Channel Allocation and Routing in Hybrid Multichannel Multiradio Wireless Mesh Networks
Existing method an Interference and Congestion Aware Routing protocol (ICAR), which aims at balancing the channel usage over the network throughput in the ICAR, always outperforms the static architecture except when the ratio is close to 1, because the channel allocation of the static network is especially optimized for this particular case. In addition, using ICAR on the static architecture only improves the throughput slightly, because the network is not as well connected as the hybrid architecture. As a result, some network links still easily get congested, which disconnects the network. Moreover, ICAR works better than ETX on hybrid architecture, because it is 60% at reducing network congestion and energy efficiency.
We have proposed a novel Interference-Aware Routing metric (IAR) that estimates the effective link share through local measurements. This approach allows accounting for intra-flow and inter-flow interference as well as packet loss resulting from channel high quality. We first describe the criteria we chose and analyze how each of the selected routing metrics addresses these criteria.