Wireless mesh networks: performance and reliability studies

无线网状网络(WMN)由固定的无线路由器组成，通过无线链路相互连接，其中一小部分充当到Internet的网关。WMN面临的关键挑战是支持高吞吐量(以及安全和隐私)。在Mesh网络中，最大可用带宽随源和目的地之间距离的增加而迅速下降；这种下降是由于相邻跳和路径的干扰造成的。WMN的容量可以使用具有多个(正交)信道的多无线节点来增加；此外，通过仔细地调整无线路由器的发射功率，可以最小化干扰，从而增加容量。在这个项目中，我们打算(A)开发用于设计WMN的新的“广义”模型和工具，主要目标是最小化WMN的成本，同时满足所有的物理和性能要求；我们的建议的独特之处在于，不是处理每个组件(例如，多信道、功率控制、成本、服务质量等)。另外，正如迄今在文献中所做的那样，我们将通过利用它们之间的密切关系，使用统一的方法来解决上述问题；以及(B)开发新的自适应管理方案，为不同类别的用户提供服务质量支持和保证。这些方案背后的基本新颖想法是通过重新配置(例如，新的信道分配、新的拓扑)WMN来对异常(例如，故障和拥塞)做出反应，同时最小化、理想地避免对正在进行的业务的影响。使用仿真平台来评估和实验我们计划开发的模型/协议/算法，可能会产生不准确和/或误导的结果(例如，在仿真平台中使用更简单的模型/启发式方法来量化干扰)。我们将使用设备(在本应用程序中要求)来评估和试验建议的解决方案。这将允许获得准确和“真实”的结果，这可能会导致我们调整和改进我们的解决方案的性能。

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) consist of stationary wireless routers interconnected by wireless links with a small fraction acting as gateways to the Internet. The key challenge facing WMNs is supporting high throughput (in addition to security and privacy). The maximum available bandwidth degrades rapidly with increasing distance between the source and destination in the mesh network; this degradation is caused due to interference from neighboring hops and paths. The capacity of WMNs can be increased using multi-radio nodes with multiple (orthogonal) channels; also, with careful adaptation of transmission power of wireless routers, one can minimize interferences and thus increase capacity.In this project we intend to (a) develop new "generalized" models and tools for the design of WMNs with the primary goal of minimizing the cost of WMNs while satisfying all the physical and performance requirements; the uniqueness of our proposal lies in the fact that rather than treating each of the components (e.g., multi-channel, power control, cost, QoS, etc.) separately, as has been done so far in the literature, we will address the above issues using a unified approach by exploiting the intimate relationship among them; and (b) develop new adaptive management schemes to provide QoS support and assurance for different classes of users. The basic novel idea behind these schemes is to react to anomalies (e.g., failure and congestion) by reconfiguring (e.g., new channel assignment, new topology) the WMN while minimizing, ideally avoiding, the impact on the ongoing traffic.Using simulations platforms to evaluate and experiment with the models/protocols/algorithms, we are planning to develop, may produce inaccurate and/or misleading results (e.g., simpler models/heuristics are used to quantify interferences in simulation platforms). We will use the equipment (requested in this application) to evaluate and experiment with the proposed solutions. This will allow getting accurate and "real" results which may lead us to tune and improve the performance of our solutions.