Self-optimizing cooperative caching in autonomic Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have become a network of choice to provide broadband wireless Internet connectivity where wired infrastructure is uneconomical or impractical to deploy. Their support for inexpensive broadband Internet services has made them even more attractive and increased users' demand. Even with their abundant computational resources in the form of mesh routers (MRs), WMNs suffer from bottleneck effect at the Internet Gateways (IGWs) due to the nature of the traffic pattern which is often towards or away from the Internet. Inspired by the autonomic networking paradigm, we propose a self-optimizing cooperative caching solution for wireless mesh networks. The solution gradually improves data accessibility by alleviating the IGW(s) bottleneck effect using cross layer design optimizations. Our simulation results show that the proposed solution has good performance in terms of reducing gateway load and improving the packet delivery ratio.