Traffic Engineering in BFWA Mesh Networks at Millimeter Wave Band

Inherent difficulties in millimeter-wave radio operations, such as higher atmospheric attenuation, especially during rainy times, motivated the use of mesh architecture in millimeter-wave band for broadband fixed wireless access (BFWA) networks. When used with highly directional antennas, these mesh networks also provide better frequency reuse. A recent proposed architecture for such networks shows how a link can have multiple radio channels. This paper exploits this property to present a solution that uses distributed dynamic channel allocation (DDCA) to reconfigure the link capacities to achieve better Traffic Engineering. DDCA works by adding or removing channels from a link while satisfying interference constraints, based on current network conditions. The paper proposes a DDCA algorithm and then integrates it with routing. The distributed dynamic nature of the algorithm provides true scalability with fast and dynamic reconfiguration of the network. Simulation results show that the proposed solution provides better performance than solutions that employ a fixed channel allocation.