Combine and Conquer: Simultaneous Transmission Over Multiband Multi-Hop WLAN Systems

Multi-hop relay networks are deployed to restore communication environment in the catastrophe stricken area. Deployment of these networks are fast and easy but performance is low due to the relay nature of the networks. Given the surge of bandwidth hungry application, performance such as high data rates, high throughput and ultra-low latency is a concern in traditional one-hop Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) as well. Simultaneous transmission over multiple bands is a compendious solution that has the potential to significantly boost data rates and flexibility. It will enhance the network utilization and performance of high-bandwidth applications effectively and efficiently. However, there are certain challenges that need to be addressed before taking full advantage of simultaneous transmission over multiple bands. In this work, we outline the factors affecting the performance such as throughput and end-to-end delay in multiband multi-hop WLANs. Considering these factors, we design an end-to-end traffic scheduling technique that minimizes end-to-end delay and maximizes throughput. We design a mixed integer linear program (MILP) that optimizes end-to-end delay and maximizes throughput. Illustrative numerical results show that proposed technique effectively minimizes end-to-end delay and maximizes throughput.