Key technology and solution to improve throughput in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh network (WMN) is a promising solution for low cost last mile broadband Internet access. Different from Ad-hoc network which mainly concerns about mobility, the mesh nodes or mesh routers in WMN are connected via wireless links to form a multi-hop backbone infrastructure and improving throughput is their primary goal. Many technologies to build high throughput mesh networks have been proposed, such as routing metrics, multi-radio and multi-channel technology, scheduling algorithms, power control and load balancing etc. All of these are due to the network characteristic and the fundamental requirement to improve throughput in WMN. In this paper, we provide a survey of recently proposed key technologies in literature and expound some representative solutions. We focus on joint optimization and cross layer design since they are hotspot and usefully to improve throughput in WMN. Also, we present an example by combing cross layer design with genetic algorithms to guide the future works.