Gateway Selection in Backbone Wireless Mesh Networks

IEEE 802.11-based backbone mesh networks comprise of static wireless mesh routers (WMRs) which create a wireless multihop backbone to provide high-speed last-mile wireless Internet access to communities. Specialized WMRs called gateways provide the interconnection between the mesh network and fixed IP networks. Mesh routers perform backhaul routing and may additionally serve as access points (APs) for clients. Their main task is to maintain backhaul mesh connectivity and find routes to gateways for clients. An important research problem which has received little attention is the optimal selection of gateway and the route to that gateway by mesh routers within the mesh backbone. We propose an efficient gateway and route selection scheme for backbone mesh networks which can be adopted for upcoming 802.11s mesh standard with minimal changes. Gateway load, route interference and path quality metrics are used to select the best available gateway and the route to that gateway. Simulation results show improved performance compared to schemes using nearest gateway, gateway load metric or the ETX metric for gateway selection.