Joint routing and channel assignment protocol for multi-radio multi-channel IEEE 802.11s mesh networks

Efficient channel selection is essential in 802.11 mesh deployments, for minimizing contention and interference among co-channel devices. The IEEE 802.11 standard provides at least three non-overlapping channels and thus it's possible for a node equipped with more than one network interface card (NIC) to operate on different channels simultaneously. This may increase the aggregate bandwidth available for end users and thereby supporting a plurality of QoS-sensitive application. In this work, we propose a joint routing and channel assignment protocol (JRCAP) which defines a density based clustering algorithm for channel allocation (DCCA). DCCA partitions the mesh network into balanced clusters and assigns a fixed and static channel to each cluster. Moreover, JRCAP uses a routing protocol combining routing and channel allocation to establish routes and to select channels for links forming the path. It also uses a new routing metric MRC (Maximum Residual Capacity) that considers channel diversity, data rate and channel load. We evaluated the performance of JRCAP through simulation and we compared it to distributed Hyacinth. Obtained results show that our solution achieves better performance than distributed Hyacinth.