MAC Design for Interference Issues in Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been considered as potential solutions for constructing infrastructures of wireless mesh networks (WMNs). For connections going through multiple wireless hops, the interference and transmission range issue at physical layer, terminal problems at link layer, and unsatisfactory performance at transport layer may render 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol inappropriate for wireless mesh networks. In fact, the hidden and exposed terminal problems magnify if interference range is multiple times wider than transmission range. The multi-radio multi-channel WLAN is a possible solution for multi-hop mesh networks. In this paper, a multi-channel MAC protocol is extended to combat the interference range and the hidden terminal problems for multi-hop wireless mesh networks. Besides, thorough simulation results indicate that the design offers excellent throughput performance in WLAN environments.