Characterizing Interference in 802.11-based Wireless Mesh Networks

In a multihop wireless mesh network, interference among links has a significant impact on the link capacity. Thus, characterizing the interference is critical in understanding and improving the performance of the network. A common scenario in a mesh network is the existence of multiple interferers. Modeling the effect of multiple interferers is challenging as the interference level not only depends upon the number of interferers but also on their relative positions. In this work, we present a measurement based interference model that captures the effect of multiple interferers. The interference model consists of metrics that determines the transmission capacity at the sender and collision probability at receiver in presence of interferers. The presented interference model can predict the capacity of any link in the mesh network using O(n) measurements.