Modelling of Heterogeneous Wireless Networks under Batch Arrival Traffic with Communication Locality

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been proposed to provide rapid deployment and easy reconfiguration of wireless broadband communications. WMNs can interoperate with WiMAX, Wi-Fi, sensor, or cellular networks in the hybrid working environments to relay packets robustly among these heterogeneous networks and significantly extend the coverage of individual wireless access networks. Many recent studies have shown that the packet arrival process in wireless networks exhibits the batch arrival nature and the communication locality has an important impact on the network capacity. With the aim of obtaining an effective performance evaluation tool of wireless networks, this paper proposes an analytical model for heterogeneous wireless networks integrated by WMNs in the presence of batch arrival traffic with communication locality. The validity of the analytical model is demonstrated through extensive comparison between analytical and simulation results.