An Efficient IEEE 802.11 ESS Mesh Network Supporting Quality-of-Service

Abstract

IEEE 802.11 infrastructure basic service set (BSS) wireless local area networks (WLANs) are widely used, each comprising an access point (AP) and its associated stations. There is a need to interconnect BSSs wirelessly to create an extended service set (ESS) mesh network. We propose a solution for the architecture and protocols of a mesh distributed coordination function (MDCF) to interconnect a large number of APs in order to form an efficient ESS mesh network under distributed control. MDCF applies time-division multiple access to share the radio medium and is able to run on a single frequency channel on top of the IEEE 802.11a/b/g physical layers, concurrently to legacy stations. MDCF is capable to efficiently exploit channel capacity, fairly distribute bandwidth among the mesh points and support multihop relaying of a large number of concurrent traffic flows strictly observing specific quality-of-service requirements. Example simulation results proof the outstanding performance of the new concept proposed