Traffic Flow Estimation based Channel Assignment for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) provide high-speed backbone networks without any wired cable. Many researchers have tried to increase network throughput by using multi-channel and multi-radio interfaces. A multi-radio multi-channel WMN requires channel assignment algorithm to decide the number of channels needed for each link. Since the channel assignment affects routing and interference directly, it is a critical component for enhancing network performance. However, the optimal channel assignment is known as a NP complete problem. For high performance, most of previous works assign channels in a centralized manner but they are limited in being applied for dynamic network environments. In this paper, we propose a simple flow estimation algorithm and a hybrid channel assignment algorithm. Our flow estimation algorithm obtains aggregated flow rate information between routers by packet sampling, thereby achieving high scalability. Our hybrid channel assignment algorithm initially assigns channels in a centralized manner first, and runs in a distributed manner to adjust channel assignment when notable traffic changes are detected. This approach provides high scalability and high performance compared with existing algorithms, and they are confirmed through extensive performance evaluations.