Minimum Latency Broadcasting in Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Multi-Rate Wireless Meshes

We address the problem of minimizing the worst-case broadcast delay in multi-radio multi-channel multi-rate (MR²-MC) wireless mesh networks (WMN). The problem of ´efficient´ broadcast in such networks is especially challenging due to the numerous interrelated decisions that have to be made. The multi-rate transmission capability of WMN nodes, interference between wireless transmissions, and the hardness of optimal channel assignment adds complexity to our considered problem. We present four heuristic algorithms to solve the minimum latency broadcast problem for such settings and show that the ´best´ performing algorithms usually adapt themselves to the available radio interfaces and channels. We also study the effect of channel assignment on broadcast performance and show that channel assignment can affect the broadcast performance substantially. More importantly, we show that a channel assignment that performs well for unicast does not necessarily perform well for broadcast/multicast. To the best of our knowledge, this work constitutes the first contribution in the area of broadcast routing for MR²-MC WMN