Multihop Interference and Multihop Propagation of Control Signaling in IEEE 802.16d Mesh Networks

As defined in the mesh mode of the IEEE 802.16d specifications, one of the functions control signaling does is scheduling of transmissions among nodes. A node wanting to transmit has to check that no other transmissions are happening around the intended receiving node; and that no receptions are happening around the transmitting node. In other words, the node wanting to transmit has to know the status of nodes in its two-hop neighborhood. The mesh election algorithm is used for coordination of transmissions for control signaling; the three-way-handshake signaling is used for coordination of data transmissions. However, transmissions from nodes further than two hops away could still cause interference. To reduce this interference from nodes more than two hops away, the transmission scheduling mechanism and signaling can be made to include these further-away nodes. The expanded-signaling and extended-signaling schemes are presented to achieve this. Simulations show that the extended-signaling scheme reduces interference-caused packet losses while achieving good packet reception ratio.