CHRIS: CHannel and Radio Interface Switching for Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Network

Multi-radio wireless mesh network (MWMN) has been recognized as a significant direction for the next generation wireless network. This paper presents a performance problem due to transmission oscillation that occurs in multi-radio wireless mesh network, which has not been reported by anyone in the research community. Such transmission oscillation introduces reduced throughput, greater network delay and unacceptable delay variations, which have all been identified in our experiments on a multi-radio test-bed. In this paper, to overcome this oscillation problem, we propose a mechanism which we call channel and radio interface switching (CHRIS). In operation, CHRIS first carries out a metric comparison and then employs a two-phase switching process. This mechanism has been evaluated on a multi-radio test-bed and the results show that CHRIS is not only able to improve average performance, but also smoothes out variations in specific performance characteristics.