A Low Interference Channel Assignment Algorithm for Wireless Mesh Networks

Even though the IEEE 802.11 standards allow multiple non-overlapping channels that can be used simultaneously; most IEEE 802.11-based networks today use only a single channel. Many past researches that attempt to use multiple frequency channels need to modify the 802.11 protocol and therefore can't work well with the 802.11-like networks, and the hidden terminal problem still exists in many proposals. In this paper, we propose one method to utilize multiple channels in wireless mesh networks whose nodes are equipped with multiple network interfaces. The nodes receive instructions on how to use each channel from a centralized algorithm periodically. Following these instructions, the nodes can make full use of each channel and are contention-free. The performance evaluation shows that our algorithm works well in wireless mesh networks.