A New Paradigm for Load Balancing in WMNs

In this paper, we address the problem of load balancing in Wireless Mesh Networks. We consider a Cluster Based Wireless Mesh Architecture in which the WMN is divided into clusters that could minimize the updating overhead during topology change due to mobility of mesh nodes or congestion of load on a cluster. Each cluster contains a gateway that has complete knowledge about group memberships and link state information in the cluster. The gateway is often elected in the cluster formation process. We consider load of gateways and try to reduce it. As a matter of fact when a gateway undertakes to be an interface for connecting nodes of a wireless mesh network to other networks or internet, there would be some problems such as congestion and bottleneck, so we introduce a new paradigm for these problems. For solving bottleneck we use clustering to reduce load of gateways and after that by use of dividing cluster we prevent from bottleneck on gateways. We study how to detect congestion on a gateway and how can reduce loads of it that preventing from bottleneck on gateway and therefore increasing throughput of network to encountering many loads. So we propose an algorithm to detect bottleneck and remedies for load balancing in Wireless Mesh Networks. We also use Ns2-Emultion for implementing and testing the framework. Some qualitative results are provided to prove the correctness and the advantages of our framework