Joint scheduling and routing algorithm with load balancing in wireless mesh network

Wireless mesh network (WMN) is a promising solution for last mile broadband internet access. Mesh nodes or mesh routers are connected via wireless links to form a multi-hop backbone infrastructure and improving throughput is the primary goal. While previous works mainly focused on either link level protocol design or complex mathematical model, in this paper, we investigate the performance gains from jointly optimizing scheduling and routing in a multi-radio, multi-channel and multi-hop wireless mesh network. Then, two optimization objectives are addressed by considering wireless media contention and spatial multiplexing. The first objective is to maximize throughput by exploiting spatial reuse while the second one is to ensure fairness among different links. We design a cross-layer algorithm by considering both MAC layer and network layer. Simulation results show that our joint optimization algorithm can significantly increase throughput as well as fairness.

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► This paper proposes an easy and practical cross-layer design method.
► The active equal time among different links ensures the fairness.
► The decreasing transmission slots improve throughput by spatial reuse.
► We compare the fairness index of each node in MAC and network layer.