SCHEDULING TECHNIQUES FOR WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS

Wireless mesh networks (WMN) are a promising technology which provides wireless broadband connectivity to the Internet. This thesis is an investigation of scheduling problems in WMNs. First, existing scheduling solutions are discussed and classified based on technique and implementation framework. Then two novel proposed schemes are discussed in detail. The first proposed technique is a multiple gateway fair scheduling scheme. This scheme consists of distributed routing and requirement tables and a propagation algorithm for scheduling at the gateways. Simulation results confirm that fair scheduling has better performance than the scheme without fair scheduling and that multiple gateways are beneficial. The second proposed scheme is a cross-layer mixed-bias solution. We bias against distance from gateway, size of queue, link quality and a combined mixed-bias technique. Simulation results confirm that the mixed-bias approach performs better than IEEE 802.11 DCF for wireless mesh networks with respect to the metrics used for evaluation. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Mieso Denko and my co-advisor Prof. Hongbing Fan for all of their insightful guidance and helpful comments and advice during the development of the ideas presented in my thesis. I am also grateful for the expertise provided by committee members, Prof. Xining Li and Prof. Obimbo who provided additional feedback and helpful suggestions. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge my parents, Bruce and Debbie, my sister Nicole, Sarah Fewster and many other friends and family who provided support, inspiration and encouragement to complete my thesis in a timely manner. I would like to thank my colleagues and friends in the PERWIN research group a