Exploiting multiple channels for rate separation in IEEE 802.11 multi-radio wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have received an increasing interest for broadband Internet accesses. Today´s IEEE 802.11 PHY and MAC standards offer multiple channels and data rates. One of challenging issues in WMNs is to exploit multiple channels and data rates for high performance WMNs. Channel assignments control the trade-off between node connectivity and channel diversity. In multi-rate WMNs, low-rate links severely affect the capacity of high-rate links, known as rate anomaly. In this paper, we propose a distributed family-based channel assignment (FCA) protocol to separate different data rate links using multiple channels so that rate anomaly is mitigated. FCA assigns channels for rate separation and improves node connectivity and channel diversity of WMNs by using a new channel assignment and routing metric and heuristic algorithms. Simulation and experiment results verify the potential of FCA for IEEE 802.11 multi-radio WMNs.