An Adaptive Channel Reconfiguration Algorithm for Multi-Channel Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

The maximum utilization of Multi Channel - Multi Radio Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) can be achieved only by intelligent Channel Assignment (CA) and Link Scheduling (LS). A common CA and LS may not be optimal, in terms of utilization of underlying network resources, for every traffic demand in the network. Using the best CA and LS for every traffic demand results in channel reassignments which in turn lead to traffic disruption in the network. This makes WMNs very unreliable. In this paper, we present a simple, general, and efficient framework to quantitatively evaluate a reconfiguration policy, based on the two conflicting objectives, namely maximizing network utilization and minimizing traffic disruption. Then we propose a reconfiguration algorithm called Clustered Channel Assignment Scheme (CCAS), based on clustering of similar traffic matrices. We demonstrate the effectiveness of CCAS which mainly depends on the correlation between successive traffic matrices through extensive simulation studies.