Channel Allocation and Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks: A survey and qualitative comparison between schemes

In order to avoid transmission's collisions and improve network performances in wireless mesh networks (WMNs), a reliable and efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol and a good channel allocation are needed. Allowing multiple channels use in the same network is often presented as a possible way to improve the network capacity. As IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.15 and IEEE 802.16 standards provide more than one channel, thus a trivial way to improve the network performances is to allow transmission on multiple channels in each network node. A lot of research work have been conducted in the area of multi-channel allocation in order to improve the aggregate bandwidth of the hole network. In this paper, we focus our attention on the proposals for solving the channel allocation problem for Multi-Transceiver per node in the backbone level using the IEEE 802.11s technology. We classify these proposals into three categories. The first one consists on channel allocation proposals done at the MAC level independently to the other layers. The second one consists on a channel allocation approaches done by a modified MAC collaborating with upper layers. Finally, the third category concerns channel allocation methods implemented in a new layer resulting from a common-layer design between MAC and Network layer. For each category, the existing multi-channel protocols and their channel allocation approaches are identified. A qualitative comparison is conducted according to the advantages that they present, the limitations and problems they are facing, and the performances they are claiming to offer.