Subscriber Aware Fair Routing in wireless mesh networks

Multi-radio wireless mesh networks (WMN) is a feasible choice for several applications, as routers with multiple network interface cards (NICs) have become cheaper. Placement of multiple NICs on each router can significantly improve the network performance if channels are assigned wisely. This is due to the fact, that by using multiple non-interfering channels wireless interference is diminished. Routing in any network has a great impact on the overall network performance, thus a routing protocol for WMN should be carefully designed taking into account the specific characteristics of the network. In addition, in wireless networks serious unfairness, i.e., some network flows can be completely starved, can occur between users if the issue is not addressed in network algorithms or protocols. Medium access control (MAC) can guarantee fairness among users, but if a routing protocol or scheduling is unfair, the fairness obtained in the link layer is lost in the network layer. Thus, we are proposing a novel centralized routing algorithm, called subscriber aware fair routing in WMN (SAFARI), for multi-radio WMN that can assure fairness, leads to a feasible scheduling and does not collapse the aggregate network throughput with a strict fairness criterion. We show that our protocol is feasible and practical, and exhaustive simulations show that the performance is improved compared to traditional routing algorithms.