Distributed Rate-Loss Based Channel Assignment in Multi-Rate Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks(WMNs) provide cost-effective broadband access for users. Multi-Channel Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks has been one of the most important research topic. In WMNs, much attention has been paid to the problem that how to efficiently utilize multiple orthogonal channels and multiple communication radios to enhance the aggregate throughput. Most of prior works on the channel assignment problem assume that all transmission links use the basic rate and do not consider the presence of multiple bit-rates. However, in multi-rate wireless net-orks, the achievable throughput of high-rate links is severely affected by low-rate links when they share the same physical channel. This problem is called multi-rateharing problem. o address the problem, we proposed a Distributed Rate-Loss Based Channel Assignment, which can efficiently alleviate the multi-rate sharing problem. We also proposed a Rate-Loss function to support our channel assignment, where the Rate-Loss value represents the total rate degradation of all links using the channel when the current link chooses this channel. The simulation results shows that our algorithm outperforms existing schemes and is suitable for unstable environment.