Channel-Assignment and Scheduling in Wireless Mesh Networks Considering Switching Overhead

This paper considers the channel-assignment and scheduling in wireless mesh networks that employ multiple radios and multiple channels. In contrast to the various algorithms available in the literature, we explicitly model the delay overhead that is incurred during channel switching, and use that delay in the design of algorithms. We prove that the well known Greedy Maximal Scheduling (GMS) algorithm does not have any provable efficiency ratio when the switching overhead is considered. We present a centralized algorithm (CGSSO), and a dynamic algorithm (DMSSO), both of which consider switching overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms significantly outperform other algorithms in packet throughput and average packet delay metrics. Results also show that the improvements in performance become more pronounced as the switching delay increases.