Enhancing channel assignment performance in wireless mesh networks through interference mitigation functions

The notion of Total Interference Degree (TID) is traditionally used to estimate the intensity of prevalent interference in a Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Network (MRMC WMN). Numerous Channel Assignment (CA) approaches, link-scheduling algorithms and routing schemes have been proposed for WMNs which rely entirely on the concept of TID estimates. They focus on minimizing TID to create a minimal interference scenario for the network. In our prior works [1] and [2], we have questioned the efficacy of TID estimate and then proposed two reliable interference estimation metrics viz., Channel Distribution Across Links Cost (CDALcost) and Cumulative X-Link-Set Weight (CXLSwt) which are proven effective in both Grid and Random WMNS [3]. In this work, we assess the ability of these interference estimation metrics to replace TID as the interference-minimizing factor in a CA scheme implemented on a grid MRMC WMN. We carry out a comprehensive evaluation on ns-3 and then conclude from the results that the performance of the network increases by 10-15% when the CA scheme uses CXLSWt as the underlying Interference Mitigation Function (IMF) when compared with CA using TID as IMF. We also confirm that CDALcost is not a better IMF than TID and CXLSWt