An adaptive holdoff algorithm based on node state for IEEE 802.16 mesh mode with coordinated distributed scheduling

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are one of the key features of beyond 3G system because of their flexible and low-cost deployment. IEEE 802.16 mesh mode has recently emerged as an alternative protocol for establishing WMN. Because the WMN is used as wireless backbone network, the design of WMN protocol should target a high network throughput. Then, in IEEE 802.16 mesh standard, the performance improvement is limited by the holdoff algorithm in the bandwidth reservation procedure. In this paper, we propose an adaptive holdoff algorithm for IEEE 802.16 mesh mode with coordinated distributed scheduling. The proposed holdoff algorithm improves network throughput by adaptively adjusting the transmission holdoff exponent according to current node state. In addition, the proposed holdoff algorithm maintains the backward compatibility with the IEEE 802.16 mesh standard and does not require any information from other layers. Simulation results show that the proposed holdoff algorithm performs better than existing holdoff algorithm in terms of total network throughput.