Efficient Spatial Reuse in Multi-Radio, Multi-Hop Wireless Mesh Networks

In the paper, we propose a novel scheduling mechanism without modifying the existing IEEE 802.11 MAC, called wireless radio-matching protocol (RMP). It takes account of interferences in wireless mesh networks to achieve maximum spatial reuse by using pre-specified radio transmissions. In contrast with existing random access methods, the RMP adopts a decentralized controlled access to avoid nodes from unintentional packet collisions. The RMP adopts a chain topology of bidirectional transmissions, where nodes are spaced so that radios of non-neighboring nodes do not interfere with each other. Simulation results indicate that the throughput of RMP is about 30% better than that of Ripple (R.-G. Cheng et al., 2006) and almost 200% better than that of the IEEE 802.11 DCF. Although RMP achieves higher throughput than Ripple, it still maintains the same delay time and transmission quality, as verified by our simulation results. The RMP achieved a stable throughput and a low end-to-end transmission delay in both CBR and FTP traffic compared to the IEEE 802.11 DCF. In addition, the RMP is simple, easy to implement, and it eliminates the back-off inefficiencies and the collision problem in IEEE 802.11 wireless environments.