Link group management for carrier-grade wireless mesh networks

Their distributed nature makes mesh networks easy to deploy and robust against node and link failures. However, distributing functionality adds high signalling overhead and delays. Forming resource clusters in wireless mesh networks is a well-known concept to alleviate these issues. This article describes a link group system for carrier-grade wireless mesh networks that provides absolute QoS guarantees. In order to support heterogeneous wireless mesh networks, the system interface of this link group system is implemented as a technology independent interface. Performance evaluations show a good fairness without requiring per-flow queuing, a good overall system performance, and small packet delays in multi-hop setups, which makes these link groups an important component of carrier-grade wireless mesh networks.