An Extension of Routing Tree Algorithm Considering Link Speed Change in IEEE 802.11n Protocol for Wireless Mesh Network

As an inexpensive, flexible, and scalable Internet-access network, we have studied architecture, protocols, and design optimizations of the Wireless Internet-access Mesh Network (WIMNET). WIMNET consists of multiple access-points (APs) as wireless routers that are connected through wireless links. One AP acts as a gateway (GW) to the Internet, where any host must reach there for the Internet access through multi-hop communications between APs. Because a lot of traffic must be handled by these links, the latest IEEE 802.11n protocol should be adopted to provide high-speed communications. In this paper, we first show that our throughput measurement results using commercial products implementing this protocol, reveal the quick drop of the throughput as the increase of the link distance. Then, we present extensions of our previously proposed routing tree algorithm for WIMNET and the WIMNET simulator in considering this link speed change by the distance. We verify the effectiveness of our proposals through simulations in four cases with different topologies.