Weather Disruption-Tolerant Self-Optimising Millimeter Mesh Networks

Millimeter-wave networks have the potential to supplement fiber in providing high-speed Internet access, as well as backhaul for emerging mobile 3G and 4G services. However, due to the high frequency of operation (70–90 GHz), such networks are highly susceptible to attenuation from rain. In this paper, we present several mechanisms to overcome the disruptive effects of rain storms on network connectivity and service reliability. A resilient mesh topology with cross-layering between the physical and network layer has the capability to self-optimise under the presence of unstable links. We present a novel domain-specific predictive routing algorithm P-WARP that uses real-time radar data to dynamically route traffic around link failures as well as a modified linkstate algorithm XL-OSPF that uses cross-layering to achieve resilient routing. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.