A Distributed Channel Access Scheduling Scheme with Clean-Air Spatial Reuse for Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract. There are two effective approaches to maximize network capacity throughput: increasing concurrent non-interfering transmissions by exploiting spatial reuse and increasing transmission rates of active senders. These two ways are, however, a tradeoff due to the signal interference. In this paper, we propose a distributed channel access scheduling scheme under a Clean-Air Spatial Reuse architecture which spans both the MAC layer and the network planning plane to scale a wireless mesh network to high network capacity throughput and large coverage. Simulations results of the network capacity throughput performance under different levels of Clean-Air Spatial Reuse policies are presented. The results show that having more number of concurrent transmission pairs scheduled in each time slot usually can compensate the negative effect of using lower transmission rates of transmission links and result in better throughput performance.