Weighted conflict-aware channel assignment in 802.11-based mesh networks

Abstract

The hidden terminal problem, exposed terminal problem and co-channel interference problem are three main factors that limit the performance of wireless mesh networks. The network throughput can be increased by using multi-radio multichannel technology through using different channels to avoid the collisions. In this paper, we provide a channel assignment scheme considering interference, hidden/exposed terminal problem all together. For this scheme, we first propose a weighted conflict model in multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks and define a Max list-Cut problem on the weighted conflict graph. We present an approximation algorithm for the Max list-Cut problem to solve the channel assignment problem. Our simulation results show that the proposed channel assignment scheme achieves high network performance in various topologies.