Throughput Improvement in Multi-Radio Multi-Channel 802.11a-Based Wireless Mesh Networks

Single-radio mesh routers operating on a single channel suffer from low throughput due to collisions. Equipping mesh routers with multiple radios operating on non-overlapping channels can significantly improve the throughput. However, the assignment of channels to radios in a multi-radio mesh network is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a channel assignment algorithm, TICA (Topology-controlled Interference-aware Channel-assignment Algorithm), which significantly improves network throughput by minimizing interference within the mesh network using a novel approach of controlling the network topology based on power control before intelligently assigning the channels to the multi-radio mesh routers, as well as guaranteeing network connectivity.