Network capacity expansion methods based on efficient channel utilization for multi-channel wireless backbone network

This study presents new channel utilization methods for a multi-channel wireless backbone network (WBN). To flexibly and efficiently use multiple channels, we exploit OpenFlow as a baseline function. In this paper, we propose a new framework to build an OpenFlow-based multi-channel WBN and then implement two new channel utilization methods: (i) a flow direction aware channel assignment method (DCA) and (ii) a flow balance aware channel assignment method (BCA). BCA is classified into two simple multi-hop transmission procedures: (ii-1) each flow is transmitted on a persistent channel (BCA-PC), while (ii-2) being transmitted on a different channel for each hop (BCA-DC). Finally, we evaluate the proposed channel utilization methods in a real testbed. As a result, our methods can obtain approximately three times as much network capacity as the conventional WBN. In addition, BCA-DC can avoid the radio interference with neighbor hops effectively, thereby not only achieving efficient channel utilization but also expanding network capacity significantly.