Quality-of-service provisioning and resource management in wireless mesh networks

基于IEEE 802.11a/b/g、802.16a等技术的无线Mesh网络由于具有部署简单、成本低、潜在的大容量等特点，近年来在工业界和学术界引起了极大的关注。然而，它也面临着与服务质量(Qos)提供、有效的无线资源使用、可扩展性和其他问题相关的各种挑战。这项研究的长期目标是研究在互连的无线和有线网络中为多媒体流量提供服务质量，其中用户可以在任何时间自由地移动到任何地方。未来五年的研究目标是提出并研究无线Mesh网络中能够为更多移动用户提供满意的服务质量的可扩展无线资源管理方案的性能。在拟议的研究中，无线资源管理将考虑如何根据特定的网络条件最好地利用可用的容量，以支持链路层和网络层的传输。资源管理还将考虑用户的移动性和切换，以无缝地支持移动用户的服务。跨层方法允许资源管理充分利用不同网络层的优势。将研究各种方法，以使所提出的资源管理方案可扩展以在大型网状网络中工作。预计拟议的研究将实现更有效和高效的无线资源利用。它还将使无线Mesh网络不仅易于在本地部署，而且还可以在全市和更大范围内部署。

Wireless mesh networking based on IEEE 802.11a/b/g, 802.16a or other technologies has been drawing significant attention in both industry and academia recently, as it demonstrates some extremely important characteristics, such as easy deployment, low cost, and potential high capacity. However, it also faces a variety of challenges relating to quality of service (QoS) provisioning, efficient radio resource usage, scalability, and other issues. The long term objective of this research is to study QoS provisioning for multimedia traffic in interconnected wireless and wireline networks where users can move freely to anywhere at any time. The objective of the research during the next five years is to propose and investigate performance of scalable radio resource management schemes in wireless mesh networks that can provide satisfactory QoS for more mobile users. In the proposed research, the radio resource management will consider how to best exploit the available capacity based on specific network conditions to support both the link layer and network layer transmissions. The resource management will also consider user mobility and handoffs in order to support mobile user's services seamlessly. A cross-layer approach allows the resource management to fully access to the benefit from different network layers. Various approaches will be studied to make the proposed resource management schemes scalable to work in large mesh networks. The proposed research is expected to achieve more effective and efficient radio resource utilization. It will also make wireless mesh networks easy to be deployed in not only local areas, but also city-wide and larger areas.