Cooperative management of wireless mesh networks

The association/handoff procedures are important components in a balanced operation of 802.11-based wireless mesh networks. These networks are usually consisted of a static wireless backbone. The peripheral routers serve as access points (APs) and are associated with the stations (STAs) that are distributed in the network. Due to the large number of mesh APs, the STAs must decide to be associated with the mesh APs that will provide them the best QoS. In this paper we introduce the concept of cooperative association, where the STAs can share useful information in order to improve the performance of the association/handoff procedures. Furthermore, we introduce a load balancing mechanism that can control the communication load of each mesh AP in a distributed manner. We evaluate the performance of our mechanisms through OPNET simulations.