A PSO-based Simulation System for Node Placement in Wireless Mesh Networks: Evaluation Results for Different Replacement Methods

With the fast development of wireless technologies, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are becoming an important networking infrastructure due to their low cost and increased high speed wireless Internet connectivity. In this paper, we implement a simulation system based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) in order to solve the problem of mesh router placement in WMNs. We consider 4 replacement methods of mesh routers: Constriction Method (CM), Random Inertia Weight Method (RIWM), Linearly Decreasing Vmax Method (LDVM) and Linearly Decreasing Inertia Weight Method (LDIWM). We use Size of Giant Component (SGC) and Number of Covered Mesh Clients (NCMC) as metrics for optimization. From the simulation results, we found that the CM converges very fast but it has the worst performance among 4 replacement methods. The RIWM converges fast and the performance is good. The LDIWM is a combination of RIWM and LDVM. The LDVM converges after 170 number of phases but has a good performance.