Maximizing Broadcast Load in Multi-Channel Multi-Interface Wireless Mesh Networks

With the enhancement in channel bandwidth and mobile devices, more broadcast applications will be deployed in the wireless mesh networks (WMNs). While traditional approaches focus on finding a single broadcast tree in the network, we aim at maximizing the number of broadcast trees/calls that can be carried. In this paper, we first formulate an Integer Linear Program (ILP) for solving the minimum-channel-utilization broadcast tree problem in multi-channel multi-interface WMNs. In our ILP, channel assignment, routing, and scheduling are jointly considered for finding a broadcast tree that can minimize the maximum channel utilization. Intuitively, this balances all the accepted traffic load in the network, which in turn maximizes the chance of accepting future calls. However, solving ILP usually takes time and is less suitable for a system with real-time call arrival. An efficient heuristic algorithm is then designed. Our simulation results show that the proposed heuristic gives real-time response and provides comparable good performance as the ILP approach.