Distributed and centralized algorithms for large-scale IEEE 802.11b infrastructure planning

We propose a methodology to deploy large scale IEEE 802.11b telecommunications infrastructures, which are being currently used to provide broadband access in Spanish rural areas, as an expansion of shared asymmetric DVB-S or DVB-T gateways. Wireless broadband access networks have become possible with the advent of technologies like IEEE 802.11. Our approach is based on a set of basic rules to generate mesh topologies with survivability capabilities. These rules help to mitigate cochannel interference and inter-channel interference. Two infrastructure deployment algorithms are given: a distributed version, executed by infrastructure nodes themselves, and a centralized version derived from a mixed integer linear optimization model. Numerical results show that the optimization model is more efficient but the distributed algorithm is competitive, since it can be executed by the wireless network itself and generates good quality results.