Interference-traffic aware Channel Assignment for MRMC WMNs

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have the potential for improving network capacity by employing multiple radios and multiple channels (MRMC). Channel Assignment (CA) is a key issue that plays vital role in defining WMN throughput by efficient utilization of available multiple radios and channels there by minimizing network interference. The two important issues that are needed to be addressed by CA algorithm are Connectivity and Interference. CA problem is proven to be NP-Hard even with the knowledge of network topology and traffic load. In this paper we present improvements to CLICA algorithm first by extending it in ECLICA and we propose a new method based upon Minimum Spanning Tree, MSTCA algorithm. Our proposed algorithms are centralized, interference-traffic aware, routing independent, connectivity preserving algorithms. The ECLICA and MSTCA algorithms run in two phases. In the first phase they temporarily assign channels to links throughout the network. In second phase, they take feasible and necessary channel reassignment decisions for further reducing the interference and improving overall network throughput. Proposed CA algorithm assumes relatively stable traffic in the wireless mesh network. Proposed CA algorithms can be easily implemented on commodity IEEE 802.11 hardware. Our simulations demonstrate that our proposed algorithms are improvements compared to existing CLICA algorithm.