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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/187603 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Qadir, Junaid, Computer Science & Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UNSW |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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