Wireless Mesh Networking is envisioned as an economically viable paradigm and a promising technology in providing wireless broadband services. The wireless mesh backbone consists of fixed mesh routers that interconnect different mesh clients to themselves and to the wireline backbone network. In order to approach the wireline servicing level and provide same or near QoS guarantees to different traffic flows, the wireless mesh backbone should be quality-of-service (QoS) aware. A key factor in designing protocols for a wireless mesh network (WMN) is to exploit its distinct characteristics, mainly immobility of mesh routers and less-constrained power consumption. In this work, we study the effect of varying the transmission power to achieve the required signal-to-interference noise ratio for each link and, at the same time, to maximize the number of simultaneously active links. We propose a QoS-aware routing framework by using transmission power control. The framework addresses both the link scheduling and QoS routing problems with a cross-layer design taking into consideration the spatial reuse of the network bandwidth. We formulate an optimization problem to find the optimal link schedule and use it as a fitness function in a genetic algorithm to find candidate routes. Using computer simulations, we show that by optimal power allocation the QoS constraints for the different traffic flows are met with more efficient bandwidth utilization than the minimum power allocations.

Wireless mesh networking has emerged as a promising technology for future broadband wireless access, providing a viable and economical solution for both peer-to-peer applications and Internet access. The success of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is highly contingent on effective radio resource management. In conventional wireless networks, system throughput is usually a common performance metric. However, next-generation broadband wireless access networks including WMNs are anticipated to support multimedia traffic (e.g., voice, video, and data traffic). With heterogeneous traffic, quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning and fairness support are also imperative. Recently, wireless mesh networking for suburban/rural residential areas has been attracting a plethora of attentions from industry and academia. With austere suburban and rural networking environments, multi-hop communications with decentralized resource allocation are preferred. In WMNs without powerful centralized control, simple yet effective resource allocation approaches are desired for the sake of system performance melioration. In this dissertation, we conduct a comprehensive research study on the topic of radio resource management for WMNs supporting multimedia traffic. In specific, this dissertation is intended to shed light on how to effectively and efficiently manage a WMN for suburban/rural residential areas, provide users with high-speed wireless access, support the QoS of multimedia applications, and improve spectrum utilization by means of novel radio resource allocation. As such, five important resource allocation problems for WMNs are addressed, and our research accomplishments are briefly outlined as follows: Firstly, we propose a novel node clustering algorithm with effective subcarrier allocation for WMNs. The proposed node clustering algorithm is QoS-aware, and the subcarrier allocation is optimality-driven and can be performed in a decentralized manner. Simulation results show that, compared to a conventional conflict-graph approach, our proposed approach effectively fosters frequency reuse, thereby improving system performance; Secondly, we propose three approaches for joint power-frequency-time resource allocation. Simulation results show that all of the proposed approaches are effective in provisioning packet-level QoS over their conventional resource allocation counterparts. Our proposed approaches are of low complexity, leading to preferred candidates for practical implementation; Thirdly, to further enhance system performance, we propose two low-complexity node cooperative resource allocation approaches for WMNs with partner selection/allocation. Simulation results show that, with beneficial node cooperation, both proposed approaches are promising in supporting QoS and elevating system throughput over their non-cooperative counterparts; Fourthly, to further utilize the temporarily available radio spectrum, we propose a simple channel sensing order for unlicensed secondary users. By sensing the channels according to the descending order of their achievable rates, we prove that a secondary user should stop at the first sensed free channel for the sake of optimality; and Lastly, we derive a unified optimization framework to effectively attain different degrees of performance tradeoff between throughput and fairness with QoS support. By introducing a bargaining floor, the optimal tradeoff curve between system throughput and fairness can be obtained by solving the proposed optimization problem iteratively.

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) built with commodity 802.11 radios are a cost-effective means of providing last mile broadband Internet access. Their multihop architecture allows for rapid deployment and organic growth of these networks. 802.11 radios are an important building block in WMNs. These low cost radios are readily available, and can be used globally in license-exempt frequency bands. However, the 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) medium access mechanism does not scale well in large multihop networks. This produces suboptimal behavior in many transport protocols, including TCP, the dominant transport protocol in the Internet. In particular, cross-layer interaction between DCF and TCP results in flow level unfairness, including starvation, with backlogged traffic sources. Solutions found in the literature propose distributed source rate control algorithms to alleviate this problem. However, this requires MAC-layer or transport-layer changes on all mesh routers. This is often infeasible in practical deployments. In wireline networks, router-assisted rate control techniques have been proposed for use alongside end-to-end mechanisms. We evaluate the feasibility of establishing similar centralized control via gateway mesh routers in WMNs. We find that commonly used router-assisted flow control schemes designed for wired networks fail in WMNs. This is because they assume that: (1) links can be scheduled independently, and (2) router queue buildups are sufficient for detecting congestion. These abstractions do not hold in a wireless network, rendering wired scheduling algorithms such as Fair Queueing (and its variants) and Active Queue Management (AQM) techniques ineffective as a gateway-enforceable solution in a WMN. We show that only non-work-conserving rate-based scheduling can effectively enforce rate allocation via a single centralized traffic-aggregation point. In this context we propose, design, and evaluate a framework of centralized, measurement-based, feedback-driven mechanisms that can enforce a rate allocation policy objective for adaptive traffic streams in a WMN. In this dissertation we focus on fair rate allocation requirements. Our approach does not require any changes to individual mesh routers. Further, it uses existing data traffic as capacity probes, thus incurring a zero control traffic overhead. We propose two mechanisms based on this approach: aggregate rate control (ARC) and per-flow rate control (PFRC). ARC limits the aggregate capacity of a network to the sum of fair rates for a given set of flows. We show that the resulting rate allocation achieved by DCF is approximately max-min fair. PFRC allows us to exercise finer-grained control over the rate allocation process. We show how it can be used to achieve weighted flow rate fairness. We evaluate the performance of these mechanisms using simulations as well as implementation on a multihop wireless testbed. Our comparative analysis show that our mechanisms improve fairness indices by a factor of 2 to 3 when compared with networks without any rate limiting, and are approximately equivalent to results achieved with distributed source rate limiting mechanisms that require software modifications on all mesh routers.

Multi-hop wireless networks based on 802. 11 are being used more widely as an alternative technology for last-mile broadband Internet access. Their benefits include ease of deployment and lower cost. Such networks are not without problems. Current research on such networks aims at a number of challenges, including overcoming capacity limitation and poor fairness. <br /><br /> The focus of our research is for achieving fairness in multi-channel multi-hop wireless networks. First, we review the literature for different methods for representing link-contention areas, and the existing single-channel fairness computational model. Second, we generalize the fairness constraints applied to each link-contention area, defined in the existing single-channel fairness reference model, to multi-channel models. Third, by adopting the concepts of link-usage matrix and medium-usage matrix to represent network topology and flow status, and using Collision Domain theory and Clique Graph theory to represent link-contention area, we develop a computational model to compute optimal MAC-layer bandwidth allocated to each flow in a multi-channel multi-hop WMN. We simulate various network configurations to evaluate the performance of the fairness algorithm based on the above computational model in different scenarios. We have found that in the multi-channel environment, our extension to the Collision Domain model generally provides a more accurate estimation of network capacity. Based on this model, we have extended the source-rate-limiting mechanism, which limits the flow rate to its fair share computed by the computational model. Experimental results that validate these findings are presented in this thesis.

Wireless Mesh Networks are increasingly becoming popular as low cost alternatives to wired networks for providing broadband access to users (the last mile connectivity). A key challenge in deploying wireless mesh networks is designing networks with sufficient capacity to meet user demands. Accordingly, researchers have explored various schemes in an effort to build high throughput mesh networks. One of the key technologies that is often employed by researchers to build high throughput wireless mesh networks (WMN) is equipping nodes with smart antennas. By exploiting the advantages of reduced interference and longer transmission paths, smart antennas have been shown to significantly increase network throughput in WMN. However, there is a need to identify and establish an upper-bound on the maximum throughput that is achievable by using smart antennas equipped WMN. Such a bound on throughput is important for several reasons, the most important of which is identifying the services that can be supported by these technologies. This thesis begins with a focus on establishing this bound. Clearly, it is evident that smart-antennas cannot increase network throughput beyond a certain limit for various reasons including the limitations imposed by existing smart an- tenna technology itself. However with the spiralling demand for broadband access, schemes must be explored that can increase network throughput beyond the limit imposed by smart antennas. An interesting and robust method to achieve this increased throughput is by en- abling multiple gateways within the network. Since, the position of these gateways within the network bears a significant influence on network performance, techniques to “opti- mally” place these gateways within the network must be evolved. The study of multiple gateway placement in multi-hop mesh networks forms the next focus of this study. This thesis ends with a discussion on further work that is necessary in this domain.

Wireless Mesh Networking is envisioned as an economically viable paradigm and a promising technology in providing wireless broadband services. The wireless mesh backbone consists of fixed mesh routers that interconnect different mesh clients to themselves and to the wireline backbone network. In order to approach the wireline servicing level and provide same or near QoS guarantees to different traffic flows, the wireless mesh backbone should be quality-of-service (QoS) aware. A key factor in designing protocols for a wireless mesh network (WMN) is to exploit its distinct characteristics, mainly immobility of mesh routers and less-constrained power consumption. In this work, we study the effect of varying the transmission power to achieve the required signal-to-interference noise ratio for each link and, at the same time, to maximize the number of simultaneously active links. We propose a QoS-aware routing framework by using transmission power control. The framework addresses both the link scheduling and QoS routing problems with a cross-layer design taking into consideration the spatial reuse of the network bandwidth. We formulate an optimization problem to find the optimal link schedule and use it as a fitness function in a genetic algorithm to find candidate routes. Using computer simulations, we show that by optimal power allocation the QoS constraints for the different traffic flows are met with more efficient bandwidth utilization than the minimum power allocations.

Wireless mesh networking has emerged as a promising technology for future broadband wireless access, providing a viable and economical solution for both peer-to-peer applications and Internet access. The success of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is highly contingent on effective radio resource management. In conventional wireless networks, system throughput is usually a common performance metric. However, next-generation broadband wireless access networks including WMNs are anticipated to support multimedia traffic (e.g., voice, video, and data traffic). With heterogeneous traffic, quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning and fairness support are also imperative. Recently, wireless mesh networking for suburban/rural residential areas has been attracting a plethora of attentions from industry and academia. With austere suburban and rural networking environments, multi-hop communications with decentralized resource allocation are preferred. In WMNs without powerful centralized control, simple yet effective resource allocation approaches are desired for the sake of system performance melioration. In this dissertation, we conduct a comprehensive research study on the topic of radio resource management for WMNs supporting multimedia traffic. In specific, this dissertation is intended to shed light on how to effectively and efficiently manage a WMN for suburban/rural residential areas, provide users with high-speed wireless access, support the QoS of multimedia applications, and improve spectrum utilization by means of novel radio resource allocation. As such, five important resource allocation problems for WMNs are addressed, and our research accomplishments are briefly outlined as follows: Firstly, we propose a novel node clustering algorithm with effective subcarrier allocation for WMNs. The proposed node clustering algorithm is QoS-aware, and the subcarrier allocation is optimality-driven and can be performed in a decentralized manner. Simulation results show that, compared to a conventional conflict-graph approach, our proposed approach effectively fosters frequency reuse, thereby improving system performance; Secondly, we propose three approaches for joint power-frequency-time resource allocation. Simulation results show that all of the proposed approaches are effective in provisioning packet-level QoS over their conventional resource allocation counterparts. Our proposed approaches are of low complexity, leading to preferred candidates for practical implementation; Thirdly, to further enhance system performance, we propose two low-complexity node cooperative resource allocation approaches for WMNs with partner selection/allocation. Simulation results show that, with beneficial node cooperation, both proposed approaches are promising in supporting QoS and elevating system throughput over their non-cooperative counterparts; Fourthly, to further utilize the temporarily available radio spectrum, we propose a simple channel sensing order for unlicensed secondary users. By sensing the channels according to the descending order of their achievable rates, we prove that a secondary user should stop at the first sensed free channel for the sake of optimality; and Lastly, we derive a unified optimization framework to effectively attain different degrees of performance tradeoff between throughput and fairness with QoS support. By introducing a bargaining floor, the optimal tradeoff curve between system throughput and fairness can be obtained by solving the proposed optimization problem iteratively.

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) built with commodity 802.11 radios are a cost-effective means of providing last mile broadband Internet access. Their multihop architecture allows for rapid deployment and organic growth of these networks. 802.11 radios are an important building block in WMNs. These low cost radios are readily available, and can be used globally in license-exempt frequency bands. However, the 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) medium access mechanism does not scale well in large multihop networks. This produces suboptimal behavior in many transport protocols, including TCP, the dominant transport protocol in the Internet. In particular, cross-layer interaction between DCF and TCP results in flow level unfairness, including starvation, with backlogged traffic sources. Solutions found in the literature propose distributed source rate control algorithms to alleviate this problem. However, this requires MAC-layer or transport-layer changes on all mesh routers. This is often infeasible in practical deployments. In wireline networks, router-assisted rate control techniques have been proposed for use alongside end-to-end mechanisms. We evaluate the feasibility of establishing similar centralized control via gateway mesh routers in WMNs. We find that commonly used router-assisted flow control schemes designed for wired networks fail in WMNs. This is because they assume that: (1) links can be scheduled independently, and (2) router queue buildups are sufficient for detecting congestion. These abstractions do not hold in a wireless network, rendering wired scheduling algorithms such as Fair Queueing (and its variants) and Active Queue Management (AQM) techniques ineffective as a gateway-enforceable solution in a WMN. We show that only non-work-conserving rate-based scheduling can effectively enforce rate allocation via a single centralized traffic-aggregation point. In this context we propose, design, and evaluate a framework of centralized, measurement-based, feedback-driven mechanisms that can enforce a rate allocation policy objective for adaptive traffic streams in a WMN. In this dissertation we focus on fair rate allocation requirements. Our approach does not require any changes to individual mesh routers. Further, it uses existing data traffic as capacity probes, thus incurring a zero control traffic overhead. We propose two mechanisms based on this approach: aggregate rate control (ARC) and per-flow rate control (PFRC). ARC limits the aggregate capacity of a network to the sum of fair rates for a given set of flows. We show that the resulting rate allocation achieved by DCF is approximately max-min fair. PFRC allows us to exercise finer-grained control over the rate allocation process. We show how it can be used to achieve weighted flow rate fairness. We evaluate the performance of these mechanisms using simulations as well as implementation on a multihop wireless testbed. Our comparative analysis show that our mechanisms improve fairness indices by a factor of 2 to 3 when compared with networks without any rate limiting, and are approximately equivalent to results achieved with distributed source rate limiting mechanisms that require software modifications on all mesh routers.

Today Moblity Management is one of the most important tasks that need to be accomplished to secure availability and performance of communication between people. This paper explains how moblity management is currently structured and what algorithms and approaches from Peer-To-Peer technology could be used to increase availability and performance.

This thesis addresses the problem of `efficient' broadcast in a multi-radio multi-channel multi-rate wireless mesh network (MR$^2$-MC WMN). In such a MR$^2$-MC WMN, nodes are equipped with multiple radio network interface cards, each tuned to an orthogonal channel, that can dynamically adjust transmission rate by choosing a modulation scheme appropriate for the channel conditions. We choose `broadcast latency', defined as the maximum delay between a packet's network-wide broadcast at the source and its eventual reception at all network nodes, as the `efficiency' metric of broadcast performance. The problem of constructing a broadcast forwarding structure having minimal broadcast latency is referred to as the `minimum-latency-broadcasting' (MLB) problem. While previous research for broadcast in single-radio single-rate wireless networks has highlighted the wireless medium's `\emph{wireless broadcast advantage}' (WBA); little is known regarding how the new features of MR$^2$-MC WMN may be exploited. We study in this thesis how the availability of multiple radio interfaces (tuned to orthogonal channels) at WMN nodes, and WMN's multi-rate transmission capability and WBA, might be exploited to improve the `broadcast latency' performance. We show the MLB problem for MR$^2$-MC WMN to be NP-hard, and resort to heuristics for its solution. We divide the overall problem into two sub-problems, which we address in two separate parts of this thesis. \emph{In the first part of this thesis}, the MLB problem is defined for the case of single-radio single-channel multi-rate WMNs where WMN nodes are equipped with a single radio tuned to a common channel. \emph{In the second part of this thesis}, the MLB problem is defined for MR$^2$-MC WMNs where WMN nodes are equipped with multiple radios tuned to multiple orthogonal channels. We demonstrate that broadcasting in multi-rate WMNs is significantly different to broadcasting in single-rate WMNs, and that broadcast performance in multi-rate WMNs can be significantly improved by exploiting the availability of multi-rate feature and multiple interfaces. We also present two alternative MLB broadcast frameworks and specific algorithms, centralized and distributed, for each framework that can exploit multiple interfaces at a WMN node, and the multi-rate feature and WBA of MR$^2$-MC WMN to return improved `broadcast latency' performance.