Heterogeneous wireless networks will be dominant in the next-generation wireless networks with the integration of various wireless access networks. Wireless mesh networks will become to a key technology as an economically viable solution for wide deployment of high speed, scalable and ubiquitous wireless Internet services. In this thesis, we consider an interworking architecture of wireless mesh backbone and propose an effective vertical handoff scheme between 802.11 and 802.16 wireless access networks. The proposed vertical handoff scheme aims at reducing handoff signaling overhead on the wireless backbone and providing a low handoff delay to mobile nodes. The handoff signaling procedure in different scenarios is discussed. Together with call admission control, the vertical handoff scheme directs a new call request in the 802.11 network to the 802.16 network, if the admission of the new call in the 802.11 network can degrade quality-of-service (QoS) of the existing real-time traffic flows. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the handoff scheme with respect to signaling cost, handoff delay, and QoS support.

The use of wireless radio technology is well established for narrowband access systems, but its use for broadband access is relatively new. Wireless mesh architecture is a first step towards providing high-bandwidth wireless network coverage, spectral efficiency, and economic advantage. However, the widespread adoption and use of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) as a backbone for large wireless access networks and for last-mile subscriber access is heavily dependent on the technology’s ease of deployment. In order for WMNs to be regarded as mainstream technology, it needs to gain a competitive edge compared to wireline technologies such as DSL and cable. To achieve this, a broadband wireless network must be self-configuring, self-healing and self-organizing. In this thesis, we address these challenges. First, we propose a four-stage scheme (power-up, bootstrapping, network registration, and network optimization). We develop algorithms for each of these stages, taking advantage of the inherent properties of WMNs to determine the network’s topology. The novel part of our scheme is in the de-coupling of the subscriber’s credentials from the network hardware. This is a key part of our architecture as it helps ensure quick network enrolment, management and portability. It also helps, in our opinion, make the concept of widespread deployment using commodity hardware feasible.

In this thesis we propose a multi-channel wireless network based on nodes that use multiple 802. 11 radio interfaces. The proposed system is singular, as it does not require new hardware or a new MAC, but instead leverages commodity 802. 11-based products. With this system, we target scenarios where the nodes are stationary and where their location can often be controlled. We evaluate the performance in this setup using an ad-hoc network approach whereby nodes generate as well as forward data. We also present and appraise a purely-wireless multi-channel infrastructure, which operates like the WLAN infrastructure-based networks in existence today, but without any fixed-line support. In such an infrastructure nodes dedicated for routing purposes provide wireless connectivity to users. We show that a multi-interface system provide significantly higher capacity in many scenarios. Our work puts forward various challenges, points to various anomalies in the operation of the 802. 11 MAC protocol, and shows the need to tackle unfairness issues. Our experiments demonstrate that the mere use of more dual-interface nodes does not necessarily create higher capacity. We also show that traffic differentiation significantly increases aggregate throughput in realistic scenarios. Finally, we provide an example of how simple channel-allocation algorithms in controlled random topologies can allow us to take advantage of a multi-interface system.

Heterogeneous wireless networks will be dominant in the next-generation wireless networks with the integration of various wireless access networks. Wireless mesh networks will become to a key technology as an economically viable solution for wide deployment of high speed, scalable and ubiquitous wireless Internet services. In this thesis, we consider an interworking architecture of wireless mesh backbone and propose an effective vertical handoff scheme between 802.11 and 802.16 wireless access networks. The proposed vertical handoff scheme aims at reducing handoff signaling overhead on the wireless backbone and providing a low handoff delay to mobile nodes. The handoff signaling procedure in different scenarios is discussed. Together with call admission control, the vertical handoff scheme directs a new call request in the 802.11 network to the 802.16 network, if the admission of the new call in the 802.11 network can degrade quality-of-service (QoS) of the existing real-time traffic flows. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the handoff scheme with respect to signaling cost, handoff delay, and QoS support.

The use of wireless radio technology is well established for narrowband access systems, but its use for broadband access is relatively new. Wireless mesh architecture is a first step towards providing high-bandwidth wireless network coverage, spectral efficiency, and economic advantage. However, the widespread adoption and use of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) as a backbone for large wireless access networks and for last-mile subscriber access is heavily dependent on the technology’s ease of deployment. In order for WMNs to be regarded as mainstream technology, it needs to gain a competitive edge compared to wireline technologies such as DSL and cable. To achieve this, a broadband wireless network must be self-configuring, self-healing and self-organizing. In this thesis, we address these challenges. First, we propose a four-stage scheme (power-up, bootstrapping, network registration, and network optimization). We develop algorithms for each of these stages, taking advantage of the inherent properties of WMNs to determine the network’s topology. The novel part of our scheme is in the de-coupling of the subscriber’s credentials from the network hardware. This is a key part of our architecture as it helps ensure quick network enrolment, management and portability. It also helps, in our opinion, make the concept of widespread deployment using commodity hardware feasible.

This thesis proposes a potential solution for future ubiquitous broadband wireless access networks, called a cellular wireless mesh network (CMESH), and investigates a number of its performance issues. A CMESH is organized in multi-radio, multi-channel, multi-rate and multi-hop radio cells. It can operate on abundant high radio frequencies, such as 5-50 GHz, and thus may satisfy the bandwidth requirements of future ubiquitous wireless applications.<p> Each CMESH cell has a single Internet-connected gateway and serves up to hundreds of mesh nodes within its coverage area. This thesis studies performance issues in a CMESH, focusing on cell capacity, expressed in terms of the max-min throughput. In addition to introducing the concept of a CMESH, this thesis makes the following contributions.<p> The first contribution is a new method for analyzing theoretical cell capacity. This new method is based on a new concept called Channel Transport Capacity (CTC), and derives new analytic expressions for capacity bounds for carrier-sense-based CMESH cells.<p> The second contribution is a new algorithm called the Maximum Channel Collision Time (MCCT) algorithm and an expression for the nominal capacity of CMESH cells. This thesis proves that the nominal cell capacity is achievable and is the exact cell capacity for small cells within the abstract models.<p> Finally, based on the MCCT algorithm, this thesis proposes a series of greedy algorithms for channel assignment and routing in CMESH cells. Simulation results show that these greedy algorithms can significantly improve the capacity of CMESH cells, compared with algorithms proposed by other researchers.

With the wireless mesh network in the embedded systems related applications booming in recent years, the demand of enhancing the overall end to end network traffic and ensuring a stable connection is growing. We proposed a Dynamic Multi-channel Multi-path Routing Protocol (DMMR Protocol) to decompose contending traffics over different channel, different time and different paths to enhance the end to end network traffic. Choosing channel dynamically according to the channel usage around node in the process of finding paths can avoid inter-flow and intra-flow channel competition. We tend to choose paths with less intersection nodes to reduce the probability of multiple paths are broken at same time when a single node cannot work. We can enhance end to end network traffic further by using multiple interfaces at one node. We use NS2 to test DMMR Protocol, and analyzing the overall end to end traffic when multiple connections are setting up in the network. If the network can accept a new connection, the increment of end to end traffic is same as the traffic of the new connection. In connection robust test, a single path broken will not affect other flows in same connection and the end to end traffic in the connection will recovery immediately when the broken path is repaired.

In recent years, the applications of wireless mesh network in the embedded systems have become more widely. It's an important issue that how to consume lower energy and transfer data stably based on energy considerations. The embedded systems must have the appropriate routing protocol for low power consumption and stable long-distance data transmission. In this paper, a routing protocol is proposed with sequential repair and backup routing protocol(Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing-Sequential Repair and Backup Routing Protocol, AODV-SRBR Protocol), that can reduce the number of transceivers and have a stable connection. In the proposed routing protocol, the node of network can create multi-route message through decoding the path information of packets. Using a complete routing information can reduce the number of route request packets efficiently. when the link is broken, the proposed protocol can repair the data transmission by sequential repair or select backup routing. In this paper, we implement the routing protocol to verify a multi-hop connection and data transfer in the general environment. The performance of AODV-SRBR and AODV is compared and simulated by NS2. The proposed routing protocol can achieve same transmission efficiency in the fewer route request packets, fewer maintance packets and fewer transmit and receive times according to the simulation result. By stable connection¡Blow power consumption and multi-hop data transfer, we expect that the proposed routing protocol on the embedded systems platform can be extended in large sensor mesh network.

The research work presents an enhanced cross-layer routing solution for Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) based on Received Signal Strength. WMN is an emerging technology with varied applications due to inherent advantages ranging from self-organisation to auto-con guration. Routing in WMN is fundamen- tally achieved by hop counts which have been proven to be de cient in terms of network performance. The realistic need to enhance the link quality metric to improve network performance has been a growing concern in recent times. The cross-Layer routing approach is one of the identi ed methods of improving routing process in Wireless technology. This work presents an RSSI-aware routing metric implemented on Optimized Link-State Routing (OLSR) for WMN. The embedded Received Signal Strength Information (RSSI) from the mesh nodes on the network is extracted, processed, transformed and incorporated into the routing process. This is to estimate efficiently the link quality for network path selections to improved network performance. The measured RSSI data is filtered by an Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) filter. This novel routing metric method is called RSSI-aware ETT (rETT). The performance of rETT is then optimised and the results compared with the fundamental hop count metric and the link quality metric by Expected Transmission Counts (ETX). The results reveal some characteristics of RSSI samples and link conditions through the analysis of the statistical data. The divergence or variability of the samples is a function of interference and multi-path e effect on the link. The implementation results show that the routing metric with rETT is more intelligent at choosing better network paths for the packets than hop count and ETX estimations. rETT improvement on network throughput is more than double (120%) compared to hop counts and 21% improvement compared to ETX. Also, an improvement of 33% was achieved in network delay compared to hop counts and 28% better than ETX. This work brings another perspective into link-quality metric solutions for WMN by using RSSI to drive the metric of the wireless routing protocol. It was carried out on test-beds and the results obtained are more realistic and practical. The proposed metric has shown improvement in performance over the classical hop counts metric and ETX link quality metric.

Opportunistic communication leverages communication opportunities arising by chance to provide significant performance benefit and even enable communication where it would be impossible otherwise. The goal of this dissertation is to optimize opportunistic communication to achieve good performance in wireless networks. A key challenge in optimizing opportunistic communication arises from dynamic and incidental nature of communication. Complicated wireless interference patterns, high mobility, and frequent fluctuations in wireless medium make the optimization even harder. This dissertation proposes a series of optimization frameworks that systematically optimizes opportunistic communication to achieve good performance in wireless mesh networks and vehicular networks. We make the following three major contributions: First, we develop novel algorithms, techniques, and protocols that optimize opportunistic communication of wireless mesh network to achieve good, predictable user performance. Our framework systematically optimizes end-to-end performance (e.g., total throughput). It yields significant improvement over existing routing schemes. We also show that it is robust against inaccuracy introduced by dynamic network conditions. Second, we propose a novel overlay framework to exploit inter-flow network coding in opportunistic routing. In this framework, an overlay network performs inter-flow coding to effectively reduce traffic imposed on the underlay network, and an underlay network uses optimized opportunistic routing to provide efficient and reliable overlay links. We show that inter-flow coding together with opportunistic routing and rate-limiting brings significant performance benefit. Finally, we develop a novel optimization framework in vehicular networks to effectively leverage opportunistic contacts between vehicles and access points (APs). We develop a new mobility prediction algorithm and an optimization algorithm to determine an efficient replication scheme that exploit the synergy among Internet connectivity, local wireless connectivity, mesh network connectivity, and vehicular relay connectivity. Based on our framework, we develop a practical system that enables high-bandwidth content distribution and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach using simulation, emulation, and testbed experiments. / text