Utility based channel assignment: A centralized channel assignment mechanism for multi radio multi channel wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we address the channel assignment problem in a multi-radio mesh network that involves assigning channels to radio interfaces for eliminating the effect of wireless interference. Due to the insufficient number of frequency channels and available radios per node, interference is still present which limits the available bandwidth on wireless links and eventually decreases the achievable throughput. In this paper, we investigate the effect of considering the diverse delivery probability of the wireless links on the channel assignment solutions. We show that it is possible to classify the wireless links and omit some of them to benefit from a more diverse-channel solution. We propose a new channel assignment mechanism aiming to minimize the interference over high performance links. Finally, a performance study is carried out to assess the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm. Evaluations show that the multi-channel network obtained from our proposed algorithm achieves significant improvement in terms of reducing the interference and increasing the network capacity.