POCAM: Partially overlapped channel assignment in multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh network

Wireless mesh network (WMN) is deemed as a promising technology to provide last few miles connectivity. Multi-radio multi-channel mesh nodes are often used to increase the chance of concurrent transmission. Although IEEE 802.11b/g standards define 11 available channels, the maximum number of non-overlapping channels is only three. Most existing channel assignment schemes are based on these non-overlapping channels. However, exploiting the partially overlapped channels can further improve the network performance. In this paper, we model the partially overlapped channels and propose a new partially overlapped channel assignment algorithm called POCAM. The POCAM algorithm stems from the measurements of commercial radios on real testbeds. The characteristics of traffic distribution in the WMN backhaul are also taken into consideration. The simulation results based on NS-3 demonstrate that POCAM achieves much better performance than the traditional channel assignment schemes which only utilize non-overlapping channels.