Towards a Realistic Maximum Flow Model in Hybrid Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks
Martin Backhaus, Michael Rossberg, Guenter Schaefer · 2021
There is a continuous interest in multi-hop multichannel Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) based on IEEE 802.11 for years now. Many design problems have been proposed to calculate performance metrics like the maximum flow to improve network capacity. However, these usually presume global coordination of transmissions in a slotted time model, a highly questionable presumption for IEEE 802.11. Additionally to this shortcoming, existing data rate models and link correlations are not realistic, rendering results imprecise. Furthermore, they are not incorporating other means of communication, e.g., wired connections, which could exist in real-world scenarios due to geographical proximity of selected nodes or availability of access to a wired LAN or WAN infrastructure - leading to the use case of hybrid WMNs. This paper proposes a model for maximum flow in hybrid multi-channel WMNs based on shared airtime. It is tailored to incorporate an exact representation of data rates and link correlations in IEEE 802.11 networks to produce dependable results and it furthermore supports wired connections. Packet-level simulation results verify key aspects of our model, supporting its validity with only a small relative error of less than 5% on average and no severe outliers.