Autonomic Fault Management for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) provides a cheaper option for backhauls that can be leveraged to provide low-cost access services. Compared to conventional wireless LANs, the benefits of a WMN include greater range because of packet relaying and higher throughput because of shorter hops. A WMN, however, may be subject to a variety of faults that are hard to diagnose manually. In this paper we discuss Autonomic Fault Management (AFM) to automate many of the fault management tasks by continuously monitoring network condition for self-awareness, analyzing the fault when it is detected for self-diagnosis, and taking adaptation actions for self-recovery. Thus AFM can reduce potential human errors and can respond to faults faster, effectively reducing the network downtime. We review challenges and possible solutions for three important components of an AFM: network measurements, fault diagnosis, and fault recovery. We also briefly discuss the security issue for AFM.