Efficient Mac Layer handoff management scheme for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have received much attention in recent years thanks to their desirable features such as its capability of enhancing coverage with low transmission power. A WMN is dynamically self-organized and self-configured, with the nodes in the network automatically establishing and maintaining mesh connectivity among themselves. Mobility management, with provisioning of Quality of Service guarantees to mobile stations (MSs), is one of the key topics in these networks. This paper proposes efficient Mac Layer handoff management scheme for WMNs. First, we describe a new approach to reduce discovery delay based on handoff prediction when MSs roam across different Wireless Mesh Routers (WMRs). Then we develop a new algorithm to select the optimal target WMR using the minimum airtime cost as metric. The simulation results show that our design may achieve better performance in terms of discovery delay and network throughput.