Abstract

KOBEL, Christian; BALUJA GARCIA, Walter  and  HABERMANN, Joachim. A system for load balancing in multi-interface wireless mesh networks. EAC [online]. 2012, vol.33, n.3, pp. 85-98. ISSN 1815-5928.

Wireless mesh networks based on IEEE 802.11 have been initially designed for military purposes, but recently have been deployed widely in customer-based and industrial networks. For more than 10 years wireless mesh networks are in the focus of investigation. Still, topics on routing and quality of service (QoS) are constantly investigated and improved, especially since current wireless mesh hardware allows bigger and highly scalable mesh clouds (e.g., backbone networks). Independently of the application of mesh technology, the deployment of multi-interface nodes offers advantages in terms of capacity and network efficiency. Decreasing prices for wireless hardware benefit this trend. But multi-interface mesh networking generally comes with the cost of a higher system complexity. Especially load balancing and channel assignment have to be carefully adapted. In the presented paper a system which implements the above mentioned aspects is proposed. It includes diverse load balancing modes, taking the possibility of channel assignment algorithms into account. Included interface bundling management results in a more efficient usage of resources. Regarding components and their functionalities are described. An evaluation of the introduced system is provided in form of measurements in different mesh scenarios.

Keywords : channel bundling; channel assignment; load balancing; multihop; multinterfaces; ad-hoc networks; wireless mesh networks (WMN).

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