A Handoff Solution in Wireless Mesh Networks by Implementing Split Channels

Seamless handoff support is an essential issue to ensure continuous communications in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). Due to the existence of multi-hop wireless links, traditional handoff schemes designed for single-hop wireless access networks can hardly guarantee the low handoff latency requirement in WMNs. Existing solutions on reducing the handoff delay in WMNs ignore one important factor for the long handoff delay: the channel access delay of handoff signaling packets over the multi-hop wireless mesh backbone network. In this paper, we address the seamless handoff issue in WMNs from a different perspective and propose a channel splitting strategy to reduce the channel access delay of handoff signaling packets over multi-hop wireless links. Based on the proposed channel splitting strategy, the handoff procedures and two transmission strategies for scheduling the delivery of handoff signaling packets are designed. Simulation results show that using the proposed channel splitting strategy, the handoff delay requirement in WMNs can be guaranteed regardless of the background data traffic, and the channel throughput can also be improved.