MAC flow fairness in IEEE 802.11 based wireless mesh networks

Abstract

In the past decade, IEEE 802.11 protocol, which is originally designed for wireless local area networks (WLAN), has been invoked repeatedly in the context of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) to provide last-mile broadband service and large-scale metropolitan area networks thanks its high data rate, wide coverage and reduced infrastructure expenditure. Nevertheless, such deployment makes the well-known WLAN problems, such as hidden or exposed terminals, channel impairments such as multi-path fading, and so on, more severe, resulting in several types of service provisioning problem in WMNs. Among such problems that are yet to be addressed, we list, the lack of fairness among MAC flows, and flow starvation, which is the ultimate manifestation of the lack of fairness. In this thesis, we aim to...[ Read more ]