Joint channel allocation and routing in wireless mesh networks

We consider the channel allocation and routing problem for data transfer in wireless mesh networks with half duplex communication links. The interference constraints associated with channel allocation and the corresponding routing constraints are identified as a set of linear constraints. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation of the problem is then proposed to maximize the minimum spare capacity of each link. For networks of large size, we present sub-problems for channel allocation and routing and obtain a suboptimal solution for the problem. This method reduces the problem size thereby reducing the solving time. We analyze the problem for large networks with low traffic requirements and present some numerical results.