Mobility-aware clustering algorithms with interference constraints in wireless mesh networks

Abstract

One of the major concerns in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is the radio resource utilization efficiency, which can be enhanced by managing efficiently the mobility of users as well as the interference effect among neighboring links. To achieve this, we propose in this paper the use of clustering and a new interference-aware routing metric, called INX. Specifically, we first propose two mobility-aware clustering algorithms that take into consideration the mobility properties of users in order to improve the WMN performance. Then, we propose the use of INX in the clustering process in order to maximize the total network throughput. We prove through simulations that both clustering schemes can achieve significant gains in terms of radio resource utilization and load balancing, especially when using the INX metric. Hence, and as a main contribution, we show that by taking into account the interference effect between links, we can improve the performance of our clustering algorithms and increase the gain initially observed with the conventional hop-count metric.