Dynamic resources allocation in wireless mesh networks

In wireless mesh networks two different media access control mechanisms have been defined to allow several mesh node to access the shared wireless means: CSMA and TDMA. In CSMA, concurrent transmissions from different nodes are allowed. To mitigate the problem of interference several orthogonal channels are assigned to break the network in several smaller collision domain. In TDMA instead, time is divided in collision free transmission opportunities (slots) which are allocated to the nodes. A static allocation of these resources, channels and slots, has been demonstrated to result in poor performances due to variation in channel quality and in traffic demand over the time. In this work we provide an overview of our ongoing research on how to manage these resources efficiently. In particular, we propose two dynamic allocation policies which are designed to mitigate the problems of collisions, in CSMA, and local congestion, in TDMA, caused by an initial static allocation.