A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for Joint Channel Assignment and Multicast Routing in Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks

Multicast routing is an effective mechanism for delivering data to a group of receivers. Due to intrinsic property of air medium in wireless mesh networks (WMN), interference is an important issue in determining the data rate for multicast services. Interference reduction is handled by assigning multiple orthogonal channels to multiple radios in multi-radio multi-channel WMNs. Channel assignment is known to be a NP-complete problem. Most prior methods have solved multicast routing and channel assignment problems sequentially and have not considered the interplay between these two problems. Focusing on this issue, we address joint channel assignment and routing problem for multicast applications. In this paper, a novel technique based on a multi-objective genetic algorithm is proposed to build a delay constrained minimum cost multicast tree with minimum interference. We have examined the proposed algorithm on different network configurations. Experimental results demonstrate that our method finds better trees in terms of cost, delay, and interference compared to prior methods.     

Design and implementation of multicasting for multi-channel multi-interface wireless mesh networks

Multicasting is a useful communication method in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). Many applications in WMNs require efficient and reliable multicast communications, i.e., high delivery ratio with low overhead among a group of recipients. In spite of its significance, little work has been done on providing such multicast service in multi-channel WMNs. Traditional multicast protocols for wireless and multi-hop networks tend to assume that all nodes, each of which is equipped with a single interface, collaborate on the same channel. This single-channel assumption is not always true, as WMNs often provide nodes with multiple interfaces to enhance performance. In multi-channel and multi-interface (MCMI) WMNs, the same multicast data must be sent multiple times by a sender node if its neighboring nodes operate on different channels. In this paper, we try to tackle the challenging issue of how to design a multicast protocol more suitable for MCMI WMNs. Our multicast protocol builds multicast paths while inviting multicast members, and tries to allocate the same channel to neighboring members in a bottom-up manner. By unifying fixed channels of one-hop multicast neighbors, the proposed algorithm can improve the performance such as reducing multicast data transmission overhead and delay, while managing a successful delivery ratio. In order to prove such expectation on the performance, we have implemented and evaluated the proposed solution on the real testbed having the maximum 24 nodes, each of which is equipped with two IEEE 802.11a Atheros WLAN cards.     

On a joint temporal-spatial multi-channel assignment and routing scheme in resource-constrained wireless mesh networks

Use of multiple orthogonal channels can significantly improve network throughput of multi-hop wireless mesh networks (WMNs). In these WMNs where multiple channels are available, channel assignment is done either in a centralized manner, which unfortunately shows a poor scalability with respect to the increase of network size, or in a distributed manner, where at least one channel has to be dedicated for exchanging necessary control messages or time synchronization has to be utilized for managing the duration of data packet transmission, causing excessive system overhead and waste of bandwidth resource. In this paper, we first formulate multi-channel assignment as a NP-hard optimization problem. Then a distributed, heuristic temporal-spatial multi-channel assignment and routing scheme is proposed, assuming every wireless node in the network is equipped with a single-radio interface. Here the gateway node is set to use all the channels sequentially in a round-robin fashion. This temporal scheme ensures all the nodes that need to directly communicate with the gateway node shall have a fair access to it. For those non-gateway nodes, a spatial scheme where channels are assigned based on their neighbors’ channel usage is adopted to exploit parallel communications and avoid channel interference among nodes. Furthermore, since the routing factors, including channel usage of neighbor nodes, node hop count, node memory size, and node communication history, are all considered along with the channel assignment, network performance, measured by packet delivery latency, channel usage ratio, and memory usage ratio, tends to be considerably enhanced. The simulation results have confirmed that, compared with a couple of well-known multi-channel assignment schemes, such as LCM [21] and ROMA [15], the proposed scheme shows substantial improvement in network throughput with a very modest collision level. In addition, the proposed scheme is highly scalable as the algorithm complexity is only linearly dependent on the total number of channels that are available in the network and the number of neighbors that a network node directly connects to.     

Joint channel assignment and routing in multiradio multichannel wireless mesh networks with directional antennas

The aggregate capacity of a wireless mesh network (WMN) is severely affected by interflow interference. In this paper, we propose a network architecture that incorporates directional antennas with multiple orthogonal channels to effectively enhance the performance of WMNs. First, a sectored connectivity graph is introduced to model multiradio multichannel WMNs with directional antennas. Next we formulate the topology design, directional interface assignment, channel allocation, and routing mathematically as a mixed integer linear programming problem. This problem is solved using an iterated local search algorithm to obtain optimized network resource allocation. Simulation results indicate that the proposed architecture can achieve higher packet delivery ratio while providing better network fairness. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An optimization framework for multicasting in MCMR wireless mesh network with partially overlapping channels

This paper focuses on the problem of maximizing throughput in multicast routing in Multi-Channel, Multi-Radio (MCMR) wireless mesh network. We propose an optimization framework based on binary integer programming that minimizes interference in multicast communication. Our Multicasting with multiple Gateways and Partially Overlapped Channels (MG-POC) framework utilizes a rational node selection to construct multicast tree that increases network performance. MG-POC is efficient as it (1) constructs the paths between source and receivers with minimal number of data forwarding nodes; (2) employs multiple gateways to substantially reduce interference and usage of resources; (3) benefits from wireless broadcast advantage and partially overlapped channels in channel assignment; (4) solves channel assignment and tree construction problems simultaneously. A weakly decoupled approach is also presented which finds a nearly optimal solution for large network problems in a reasonably short amount of time. Our schemes are proved to offer a connected and loop-free tree; and their performance are well compared to that of several existing methods on different simulation scenarios. The results of our simulations also demonstrate that incorporating multi-gateway and partially overlapping channels has a significant impact on minimizing network interference which, in turn, dramatically enhances network throughput.     

一种多射频、多信道无线mesh网络的信道分配算法

宽带无线接入网得到广泛应用,廉价的数据回程带宽是决定宽带无线接入网成功应用的重要因素。丈中设计了一种使用多射频、多信道、方向性天线的新型无线mesh数据回程网,提出了一种基于连接图的等价变换来实现该无线mesh网络信道分配算法。仿真结果表明,文中提出的信道分配算法有效地减少链路间干扰,提高了网络性能。     

Joint load balanced stable routing and communication segment assignment in mobile cognitive radio ad‐hoc networks

The fundamental issues in mobile cognitive radio ad‐hoc networks are the selection of the optimal stable paths between nodes and proper assignment of the frequency channels/time slots (communication segments) to the links. In this paper, a joint load balanced stable routing and communication segment assignment algorithm is proposed that considers jointly the mobility prediction, mitigating the co‐channel interference and energy consumption. The novelty of the proposed algorithm lies in the increasing of the path stability, which benefits from the maximum link lifetime parameter and introduced weighting function to keep routes away from the PU's region. This avoids the negative impacts on the PUs' operations and decreases the conflict of the cognitive nodes. In the proposed algorithm, the concept of load balancing is considered that yields in the balancing energy consumption in the network, improving the network performance and distributing traffic loads on all available channels. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by evaluating the aggregate interference energy, average end‐to‐end delay, goodput, and the energy usage per packet under 6 scenarios. The results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is significantly better than the recently proposed joint stable routing and channel assignment protocol.     

A QoS Routing Protocol with Bandwidth Allocation in Multichannel Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile multimedia applications have recently generated much interest in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) supporting quality-of-service (QoS) communications. Multiple non-interfering channels are available in 802.11 and 802.15 based wireless networks. Capacity of such channels can be combined to achieve higher QoS performance than for single channel networks. The capacity of MANETs can be substantially increased by equipping each network node with multiple interfaces that can operate on multiple non-overlapping channels. However, new scheduling, channel assignment, and routing protocols are required to utilize the increased bandwidth in multichannel MANETs. In this paper, we propose an on-demand routing protocol M-QoS-AODV in multichannel MANETs that incorporates a distributed channel assignment scheme and routing discovery process to support multimedia communication and to satisfy QoS bandwidth requirement. The proposed channel assignment scheme can efficiently express the channel usage and interference information within a certain range, which reduces interference and enhances channel reuse rate. This cross-layer design approach can significantly improve the performance of multichannel MANETs over existing routing algorithms. Simulation results show that the proposed M-QoS-AODV protocol can effectively increase throughput and reduce delay, as compared to AODV and M-AODV-R protocols.     

Efficient link-heterogeneous multicast for wireless mesh networks

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a type of communication network made up of wireless devices and organized in a mesh topology. Multicast is a fundamental service in WMNs because it efficiently distributes data among a group of nodes. Multicast algorithms in WMNs are designed to maximize system throughput and minimize delay in order to satisfy the end users?? requirement. Previous work has unrealistically assumed that the underlying WMN is link-homogeneous. We consider one important form of link heterogeneity: different link loss ratios, or equivalently different ETX. Different from other work addressing multicast in wireless networks, we point out that the local broadcast quality relies on the worst involved link. We model different link loss ratios by defining a new graph theory problem, Heterogeneous Weighted Steiner Connected Dominating Set (HW-SCDS), on an edge-weighted directed graph, where the edge weights model ETX, the reciprocal of link loss ratios. We minimize the number of transmissions in a multicast by computing a minimum HW-SCDS in the edge-weighted graph. We prove that HW-SCDS is NP-hard and devise a greedy algorithm for it. To improve the effectiveness of our algorithm, we design a dedicated channel assignment algorithm. Simulations show that our algorithm significantly outperforms the current best WMN multicast algorithm by both increasing throughput and reducing delay.     

A ring-based multicast routing topology with QoS support in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networking (WMN) is an emerging technology for future broadband wireless access. The proliferation of the mobile computing devices that are equipped with cameras and ad hoc communication mode creates the possibility of exchanging real-time data between mobile users in wireless mesh networks. In this paper, we argue for a ring-based multicast routing topology with support from infrastructure nodes for group communications in WMNs. We study the performance of multicast communication over a ring routing topology when 802.11 with RTS/CTS scheme is used at the MAC layer to enable reliable multicast services in WMNs. We propose an algorithm to enhance the IP multicast routing on the ring topology. We show that when mesh routers on a ring topology support group communications by employing our proposed algorithms, a significant performance enhancement is realized. We analytically compute the end-to-end delay on a ring multicast routing topology. Our results show that the end-to-end delay is reduced about 33 %, and the capacity of multicast network (i.e., maximum group size that the ring can serve with QoS guarantees) is increased about 50 % as compared to conventional schemes. We also use our analytical results to develop heuristic algorithms for constructing an efficient ring-based multicast routing topology with QoS guarantees. The proposed algorithms take into account all possible traffic interference when constructing the multicast ring topology. Thus, the constructed ring topology provides QoS guarantees for the multicast traffic and minimizes the cost of group communications in WMNs.     

Tree‐based channel assignment schemes for multi‐channel wireless sensor networks

Many sensor node platforms used for establishing wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can support multiple radio channels for wireless communication. Therefore, rather than using a single radio channel for whole network, multiple channels can be utilized in a sensor network simultaneously to decrease overall network interference, which may help increase the aggregate network throughput and decrease packet collisions and delays. This method, however, requires appropriate schemes to be used for assigning channels to nodes for multi‐channel communication in the network. Because data generated by sensor nodes are usually delivered to the sink node using routing trees, a tree‐based channel assignment scheme is a natural approach for assigning channels in a WSN. We present two fast tree‐based channel assignment schemes (called bottom up channel assignment and neighbor count‐based channel assignment) for multi‐channel WSNs. We also propose a new interference metric that is used by our algorithms in making decisions. We validated and evaluated our proposed schemes via extensive simulation experiments. Our simulation results show that our algorithms can decrease interference in a network, thereby increasing performance, and that our algorithms are good alternatives for static channel assignment in WSNs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Virtual access network embedding in wireless mesh networks

Network virtualization of a wireless mesh network (WMN) is an economical way for different subscribers to customize their exclusive access networks through a common network infrastructure. The most critical task of network virtualization is virtual network embedding, which can be divided into two sub-problems: node mapping and link mapping. Although there exist approaches to virtual network embedding in wired networks, the characteristics of WMNs make virtual network embedding become a unique and challenging problem. In this paper, virtual access network embedding is studied for WMNs. To support flexible resource allocation in virtual access network embedding, each access node is designed based on orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) dual-radio architecture. Through subcarrier allocation on each link, virtual access networks are gracefully separated from each other. To coordinate channel assignment across different links under the constraint of a limited number of orthogonal channels, a novel channel allocation algorithm is proposed to exploit partially-overlapped channels to improve resource utilization. Since the virtual access network embedding problem is NP-hard, a heuristic algorithm is developed based on an enhanced genetic algorithm to obtain an approximate but effective solution. Simulation results illustrate that the virtual access network embedding framework developed in this paper works effectively in WMNs.     

曙光5000高性能计算机多播网络的设计

 本文介绍了曙光5000高性能计算机多播网络设计的关键技术.减少多播与单播/多播与多播间的网络竞争是降低多播延迟的主要途径之一,而无死锁则是保障多播操作正确完成的前提.为了解决死锁问题,本文提出了一种基于全局资源公告的死锁避免方法;为了获得较低的多播延迟,本文充分利用胖树拓扑特点,提出了一种基于重载交换机去除的多播路径选择策略.测试结果表明,在网络重载情况下,相比于已有多播路径选择算法,本文的路径选择策略可以获得近三倍的性能提升.对于many-to-many多播通信,曙光5000多播网络可以获得90%以上的多播吞吐率.     

Partially overlapping channel assignment for WLANs using SINR interference model

The use of multiple channels in 802.11 wireless local area networks can improve network performance. Many efforts have been done to better exploit multiple non‐overlapped channels. However, the number of orthogonal channels in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.11 standards is very much limited. Recent studies indicate that we can improve the full‐range channel utilization and the network throughput by properly utilizing the partially overlapping channels. However, little work was focused on channel assignment for partially overlapping channels. In this paper, we investigate the problem of partially overlapping channel assignment to improve the performance of 802.11 wireless networks based on the Signal to Interference–Noise Ratio interference model. Using the Signal to Interference–Noise Ratio model, we deduce a direct relationship between maximizing system throughput and minimizing total interference when partially overlapping channels are employed. After that, we propose a greedy method to minimize the total interference for throughput maximization. We evaluate our algorithm through extensive simulations and compare its performances with those of the state‐of‐the‐art. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Power-Efficient Spatial Reusable Channel Assignment Scheme in WLAN Mesh Networks

Interference has strong effect on the available bandwidth of wireless local area network (WLAN) based mesh networks. The channel assignment problem for multi-radio multi-channel multihop WLAN mesh networks is complex NP-hard, and channel assignment, routing and power control are tightly coupled. To mitigate the co-channel interference and improve capacity in multi-channel and multi-interface WLAN mesh networks, a power-efficient spatial reusable channel assignment scheme is proposed, which considers both channel diversity and spatial reusability to reduce co-channel interference by joint adjusting channel, transmission power and routing. In order to assign channel appropriately, an efficient power control scheme and a simple heuristic algorithm is introduced to achieve this objective, which adjust the channel and power level of each radio according to the current channel conditions so as to increase the opportunity of channel spatial reusability. The proposed channel assignment scheme also takes load, capacity and interference of links into consideration. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our approach and demonstrate that the proposed scheme can get better performance than other approaches in terms of throughput, blocking ratio, energy consumption and end-to-end delay.     

基于拓扑分割的无线Mesh网络信道分配策略

该文根据无线Mesh网络流量呈现树状拓扑汇聚的特点提出基于拓扑分割的信道分配策略。依据无线干扰对不同链路的影响程度,把无线干扰分类为有确定方向的纵向干扰和横向干扰;提出沿着纵向干扰方向逐跳分割网络拓扑算法;提出最少信道隔离纵向干扰和为吞吐量最小的子拓扑增加信道的子拓扑间信道分配策略;提出横向干扰分块的子拓扑内信道使用方法;理论分析子拓扑内的冲突域及网络性能瓶颈,仿真研究子拓扑的吞吐性能及信道分配顺序。仿真结果表明,隔离纵向干扰和增加信道的分配策略能够有效保证和提升网络吞吐量,横向干扰分块的方法优于802.11s中定义的公共信道框架多信道机制。     

多射频无线mesh网中的联合协作路由与信道分配算法

现有的协作路由算法没有考虑多射频无线mesh网中的信道分配问题.为了给多并发业务流提供更优质的网络服务,本文结合多射频多信道技术和协作通信技术来降低同信道干扰并获得协作分集增益.基于协作通信模块虚拟化的方法,本文将联合协作路由和信道分配问题简化为联合直接路由和信道分配问题,将其建模为一个混合整数线性规划问题,并证明该问题为NP-hard问题.为了解决该问题,提出了一种宽松的联合协作路由选择和信道分配算法(Loose Joint Cooperative Routing and Channel Assignment algorithm,L-JCRCA).仿真实验结果表明,L-JCRCA可以有效提升网络整体吞吐量.     

A Cooperative Channel Assignment protocol for multi-channel multi-rate wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are considered as one of the outstanding technologies that provide cost-effective broadband Internet accesses to users. The off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11 PHY and MAC specifications support both multi-channel and multi-rate capabilities. However, designing an efficient channel assignment protocol that exploits both available channels and data rates is a critical issue to overcome the network performance degradation. In multi-rate wireless networks, high-rate links may severely suffer from throughput degradation due to the presence of low-rate links. This problem is often referred to as performance anomaly. In this paper, we design a Cooperative Channel Assignment (CoCA) protocol to consider the performance anomaly problem in multi-channel multi-rate WMNs. Based on the proposed family architecture, CoCA exploits the Estimated Delivery Time (EDT) metric and an efficient balancing algorithm. Using the EDT metric, CoCA performs channel assignments to form Multi-channel Multi-hop Paths (MMPs) so that CoCA separates high-rate links from low-rate links over different channels and increases the channel diversity. In addition, CoCA considers the performance anomaly problem and throughput fairness during channel assignments by utilizing the balancing algorithm. We evaluated the performance of CoCA through extensive simulations and found that CoCA outperforms existing well-known channel assignment protocols for WMNs.     

基于最大流的无线mesh网络负载均衡信道分配算法

针对无线mesh网络中各信道间的干扰情况及流量负载均衡问题,定义了负载均衡的目标优化函数,设计一种基于最大流的负载均衡信道分配算法。该算法优先考虑为负载量比较大的链路分配更多的带宽,使得一些关键链路能够承受较大的流量负载,实现各信道的负载均衡,减少网络拥塞,降低分组丢失率和延迟。实验结果表明,该算法较好地平衡了网络负载,在网络业务较重的情况下还能获得较好的网络性能。     

无线 Mesh 网络部分重叠信道分配综述

无线Mesh网络面临的主要挑战是由共信道干扰导致的网络容量下降问题,仔细规划部分重叠信道的使用能减少甚至消除共信道干扰。在介绍部分重叠信道基本概念的基础上,重点从单播和多播2个角度对国内外部分重叠信道分配研究领域的成果进行了分类总结与分析;深入剖析部分重叠信道分配中的难点与挑战,并展望了未来的研究方向,以期促进无线Mesh网络向“最后一公里”接入的理想解决方案演进。