Wireless mesh network capacity analysis with spatial channel reuse and adaptive modulation

In contrast to single-hop networks the capacity of wireless mesh networks (WMN) is strictly related to their topology. Therefore predicting the capacity of WMNs is rather complex and requires new tools. A collision domain based method has been used in many papers, since it may be easily fitted to any MAC protocol, routing algorithm, channel allocation method, etc. However, there are other factor influencing WMNs capacity, which have not been taken into account so far. Simplifications assumed by some authors lead to erroneous results, e.g significantly underestimated capacity of the WMN. Therefore, phenomena specific to wireless networks, such as spatial channel reuse, and features specific to wireless standards, such as link adaptivity, should be included in the analysis, as presented in this paper.