Fast Channel Establishment for IEEE 802.16 Wireless Mesh Networks

IEEE 802.16 based wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are a promising broadband access solution to support flexibility, cost effectiveness and fast deployment of the fourth generation infrastructure based wireless networks. Reducing the time for channel establishment is critical for low latency/interactive applications. In this paper, we propose two modifications to the election based transmission timing (EBTT) mechanism used in the coordinated distributed scheduling (CDS) within the IEEE 802.16 standard, which makes use of the standardized signaling messages and formats. Simulation results show that our proposed modifications results in significantly reduced channel establishment delay - up to 75% with low neighborhood densities - over the standard, and at least 10% with high neighborhood densities. Moreover, the proposed mechanisms are also applicable for the three-hop extended neighborhood CDS when required.