Efficient routing and dynamic channel switching algorithms for wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) based on IEEE 802.11s have emerged as one of the prominent technologies in multihop communications owing to ubiquitous broadband access and low cost coverage to the end users. However, the deployment of WMNs suffers from serious interference problems limiting their capacity due to multiple simultaneous transmissions. Using multiple radios for each mesh router over multiple channels can reduce the interference and improve the system capacity as well as network throughput. In this context, an efficient routing and channel switching algorithm can be adopted to mitigate the effects of interference. Apparently, channel switching and routing are two inter-dependent schemes which greatly influence the overall network performances, thus, can be synergistically developed to optimise the network throughput in WMNs. In this thesis, a novel routing metric is proposed to improve network performance known as Adaptive Routing Metric (ARM) which is able to improve network stability by reducing excessive dependency on environmental parameters. The proposed routing metric implicitly exploits link asymmetry utilising an adaptive weighting factor for efficient estimation of link qualities and also considers channel contention to reduce end-to-end delay. The simulation results reported shows around 14% and 30% improvement in terms of throughput and end-to-end delay respectively compare to metric for interference and channel diversity (MIND)