Abstract
Airtime is set as the default routing metric for the ongoing IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh networking standard. The metric is designed to minimize channel resource consumption by accounting for loss rate, bandwidth, and channel characteristics. However, the metric exhibits a noticeable ping–pong effect whose nature is still vague, and the very few references to this in the literature condemn it for being a perilous behavior. In this paper, we present a thorough study of the Airtime ping–pong effect, and highlight its correlation to the underlying rate control algorithms. Using different rate control algorithms (e.g., ARF, AARF, ONOE, AMRR and Constant rate), we establish that transmission rate adaptation is the principal cause behind the effect. We show that the effect is an inherent behavior, and that an accurate characterization of it can help improve network performance. We present a ping–pong-aware mechanism that, by detecting when a link undergoes such an effect, adapts the routing protocol for better network performance. The mechanism is O(1), decentralized, and can be easily integrated into the IEEE 802.11s routing protocol.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
IEEE TGs (2011) Status of project IEEE 802.11s. http://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/tgs_update.htm
Bahr M (2007) Update on the hybrid wireless mesh protocol of IEEE 802.11s. IEEE international conference on mobile adhoc and sensor systems (MASS 2007), pp 1–6
Kamerman A, Monteban L (1997) WaveLAN II: a high-performance wireless LAN for the unlicensed band. Bell Labs Tech J 118–133
Lacage M, Manshaei M, Turletti M (2004) IEEE 802.11 rate adaptation: a practical approach. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM international symposium on modeling, analysis and simulation of wireless and mobile systems, pp 126–134
Garroppo R, Giordano S, Iacono D, Tavanti L (2010) Notes on implementing a IEEE 802.11s mesh point Elsevier. Comput Commun 33:336–349
Bahr M (2006) Proposed routing for IEEE 802.11s WLAN mesh networks. In: Proceedings of the 2nd annual international wireless internet conference (WICON), pp 6–13
Akyildiz F, Wang W (2005) Wireless mesh networks: a survey. Comput Netw ISDN Syst 47:445–487
Perkins C, Royer E (1999) Ad-hoc on-demand distance vector routing. In: Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE workshop on mobile computing systems and applications (WMCSA), pp 90–100
Orgier R, Templin F, Lewis M (2004) Topology dissemination based on reverse-path forwarding (TBRPF). RFC 3684. IETF
Aoki H, Shinji T, Kengo Y, Akira Y (2006) IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh network technology. IEEE NTT DoCoMo Tech J 8:13–21
Raniwala A, Chiueh T (2005) Architecture and algorithms for an 802.11-based multi-channel wireless mesh network. Proc IEEE INFOCOM 3:2223–2234
De Couto D, Aguayo D, Bicket J, Morris R (2003) High-throughput path metric for multi-hop wireless routing. In: Proceedings of the ACM annual international conference on mobile computing and networking (MOBICOM), pp 134–146
Draves R, Padhye J, Zill B (2004) Routing in multi-radio, multi-hop wireless mesh networks. In: Proceedings of the ACM annual international conference on mobile computing and networking (MOBICOM), pp 114–128
Online: The ns-3 network simulator. http://www.nsnam.org/
Madwifi: The Madwifi project. http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi
Biaz S, Wu S (2008) Rate adaptation algorithms for IEEE 802.11 networks: a survey and comparison. IEEE symposium on computers and communications (ISCC 2008), pp 130–136
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Abid, M.R., Biaz, S. Airtime ping–pong effect characterization in IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh networks. Computing 97, 913–937 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-013-0374-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-013-0374-5
Keywords
- Wireless mesh networks
- IEEE 802.11s
- Airtime
- Hybrid wireless mesh protocol
- Routing
- Adaptive rate control algorithms