Channel Assignment and Link Scheduling in Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks

Capacity limitation is one of the fundamental issues in wireless mesh networks. This paper addresses capacity improvement issues in multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks. Our objective is to find both dynamic and static channel assignments and corresponding link schedules that maximize the network capacity. We focus on determining the highest gain we can achieve from increasing the number of radios and channels under certain traffic demands. We consider two different types of traffic demands. One is expressed in the form of data size vector, and the other is in the form of data rate vector. For the first type of traffic demand, our objective is to minimize the number of time slots to transport all the data. For the second type of traffic demand, our objective is to satisfy the bandwidth requirement as much as possible. We perform a trade-off analysis between network performance and hardware cost based on the number of radios and channels in different topologies. This work provides valuable insights for wireless mesh network designers during network planning and deployment.