An Architecture to Increase Performance of Self-Organizing Networks

The unpredictable variations of the characteristics of wireless and ad hoc networks make Quality of Service (QoS) support difficult. Wireless Mesh Networks constitute an alternative to provide QoS in an ad hoc network. This paper proposes a wireless mesh solution that reduces co-channel interference and simplifies both services and resources management. The architecture is based on a topology control or clustering scheme and a channel assignment mechanism. The network is organized hierarchically in order to obtain a seamless stable backbone. The clustering scheme aims to achieve a maximum number of covered nodes and a minimum hop count, while providing a topology minimizing co-channel interference by means of a channel assignment algorithm. Performance evaluation in NS-2 shows that resource management in a cluster can be uncoupled from that of neighboring clusters and that the network achieves improved performance compared to a classical ad hoc network.