Delay of backbone wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) can provide Internet broadband access to clients, supporting a wide variety of services including real-time multimedia services. Delay performance is a crucial performance of WMNs. In this paper, delay of backbone wireless mesh networks is characterized. A shortest-path routing protocol based on traffic-load balance is put forwarded. Based on the routing protocol, how the scale between the number of gateways and mesh routers, the serving capability of gateways and mesh routers, and packet arriving rate affect queuing delay of the networks is presented. Furthermore, based on a random access MAC protocol, the wireless transmission delay subject to wireless transmission collision and wireless bandwidth is studied. After all factors are taken into account, the packet delays experienced by nodes at different hop-count distances from gateway are derived, and the mean packet delay of the whole data in the backbone WMN is deduced.