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A Multi-radio 802.11 Mesh Network Architecture

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Abstract

The focus of this paper is to offer a practical multi-radio mesh network architecture that can realize the benefits of multiple radios. Our architecture provides solutions to challenges in three key areas. The first is the construction of a split wireless router that enables modular wireless mesh routers to be constructed from commodity hardware. The second is the design of a centralized channel assignment algorithm that considers the inter-dependence between channel assignment and routing in order to create high-throughput channel-diversified routes. Third is the design and implementation of several communication protocols that are necessary to make our architecture operational. Our system is comprehensively evaluated on a 20-node multi-radio wireless testbed. Results demonstrate that our architecture makes feasible the deployment of large-scale high-capacity multi-radio mesh networks built entirely with commodity hardware. Our implementation is available to the community for research and development purposes.

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Notes

  1. MuniWireless September 2006 Update, http://muniwireless.com/municipal/1359.

  2. Some mesh hardware vendors, such as Bel Air networks, claim to have addressed the hardware imperfections using specialized hardware. Unfortunately, we do not have access to their hardware because of their prohibitive cost. Hence, we are unable to say conclusively about the effectiveness of their solution.

  3. Most commodity radios available today are multi-band radios. Such radios can be made to operate at a particular channel using a simple software configuration.

  4. http://moment.cs.ucsb.edu/tic/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Citrix Online, 6500 Hollister Ave, Santa Barbara, CA, 93117, USA

    Krishna Ramachandran

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Irfan Sheriff, Elizabeth M. Belding & Kevin Almeroth

Authors
  1. Krishna Ramachandran
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  2. Irfan Sheriff
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  3. Elizabeth M. Belding
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  4. Kevin Almeroth
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Irfan Sheriff.

Additional information

This work was completed while Krishna Ramachandran was a PhD student at UCSB.

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Ramachandran, K., Sheriff, I., Belding, E.M. et al. A Multi-radio 802.11 Mesh Network Architecture. Mobile Netw Appl 13, 132–146 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-008-0026-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-008-0026-8

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