CARA-OHT: Collision-Aware Rate Adaptation for Optimal High-Throughput in IEEE 802.11s Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

The wireless mesh network (WMN) is a future network technology that develops single-hop wireless local area networks (WLANs) into multi-hop wireless mesh networks, based on the IEEE 802.11s standard. However, this development still presents many challenges, such as determining the best route between sources and destinations, especially taking into account the use of the medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layers of IEEE 802.11n/ac. Some papers have proposed rate adaptation algorithms particularly for single-hop networks; however, these only focused on mechanisms to find data rates suitable for channel conditions. In IEEE 802.11s WMNs, the design of the rate adaptation algorithm is more challenging. Besides considering the problem of channel quality and optimal throughput, it is necessary to also consider the problem of collision and the best route. It is important to take collision into account because the collision probability in multi-hop mesh networks is higher than that in single-hop networks and can lead to a lower throughput. Rate adaptation algorithms for IEEE 802.11s WMNs have been proposed in other papers, but they also do not consider the use of the MAC and PHY layers of IEEE 802.11n/ac. In this paper, we propose the collision-aware rate adaptation for optimal high-throughput (CARA-OHT) algorithm for WMN IEEE 802.11s. An evaluation through the extensive use of a network NS-3 simulator shows that the proposed algorithm exhibits a higher throughput than previously developed algorithms.