Routing in IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks with channel width adaptation

Abstract

Selecting routes of higher throughput in wireless mesh networks plays an important hole and has been considered in several works. Previous studies establish routing metrics that do not consider the possibility of using new technologies such as Software Defined Radio (SDR) that allows transmission channels of different widths. In wireless mesh networks equipped with routers that apply this technology, it is possible to improve the network capacity by transmitting multiple parallel flows in narrower channels. Another improvement related to the use of such approach is the reduction in the number of hops of an end-to-end communication. In this work, we employ these possibilities to develop a simulation model for wireless mesh networks that are capable to perform channel width adaptation. Additionally, we extend the traditional Medium Time Metric (MTM), propose the B-MTM (Burst per MTM) metric and an algorithm that jointly select routes with higher throughput in wireless mesh networks.