ABI: A mechanism for increasing video delivery quality in multi-radio Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are becoming increasingly popular mostly due to their ease of deployment. One of the main drawbacks of these networks is that they suffer with respect to Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning to their clients. Equipping wireless mesh nodes with multiple radios in order to increase the available network bandwidth has become a common practice nowadays due to the low cost of the wireless chipsets. As the available bandwidth increases with each radio deployed on the mesh node, the energy consumed for transmission increases accordingly. Thus, efficient usage of the radio interfaces is a key aspect for keeping the energy consumption at low levels while offering high QoS level for video deliveries to the mesh network´s clients. In WMN context, this paper proposes the Available Bandwidth Increase (ABI), a mesh node-based mechanism for efficient usage of the available bandwidth, which manages the wireless radio interfaces by activating them only when needed such as the energy consumption is maintained low. The proposed ABI is thoroughly evaluated and it is shown that it can provide video deliverie at good QoS level and at low energy consumption.