Routing for capacity improvement in Multi-Channel-Width Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

This study indicates that the assignment of multiple channels with different bandwidths to links of a IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh network can drastically increase the capacity of these networks considering equal amount of available spectrum. However, this is possible only for networks where routers are equipped with multiple radios. In this context, this paper proposes a metric used to select the amount of radios and width of the channels to be used in each link, as well the routing path that enables a decrease in the interference between those links. We use simulations in ns-2 to assess the proposed routing metric and compare it with others in the literature. The obtained results point to an increase in the capacity of the studied networks.