Fairness enhancement using transmission scheduling in multi-hop wireless mesh networks

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a peer-to-peer multi-hop wireless network in which nodes cooperate with one another to route packets to the gateway. In multi-hop wireless networks, flows spanning multiple hops experience more contentions in order to access the medium compared to those closer to their destination. Thus, nodes with longer distance to the gateway suffer from bandwidth starvation. In this paper, we propose a transmission scheduler algorithm that achieves better fairness and maximizes bandwidth use. Our algorithm assigns each node a weight based on its location in the WMN and on its aggregated traffic load. The weight is later used to compute each node transmission time. We show that the algorithm improves considerably the throughput of each node in the network and the overall network throughput. In addition, it enhances bandwidth fairness among nodes, and decreases the end-to-end average delay. The results are evaluated by means of simulations.