Resource Allocation in Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Achieving efficient bandwidth utilization in ad-hoc networks is known to be a challenging open research issue. Recently, much attention has been devoted to wireless mesh networks and consequently, it has been renewed the interest in improving the performance of ad-hoc networks, which are used as the backhaul structure of hybrid ad-hoc/cellular systems. Moreover, fairly new concepts such as multi-channels and multi-radio availability have been proven to be promising ways for performance improvement. In fact they allows for a better spatial reuse and interference reduction and can lead to throughput improvement. Clearly a smart resource management is needed. This paper presents a survey on the multi-radio multi-channel resource allocation issues and proposed solutions, with particular attention to the case of 802.11 networks. Channel allocation, scheduling and routing issues are addresses an both analytical models and protocols are presented. Some open research issues are also pointed out.