decentrally controlled wireless multi-hop mesh networks for high quality multi-media communications
Wireless mesh technology is receiving growing attention. Multi-hop operation can be implemented in high quality multi-media communication systems to achieve cost efficiency. However, hidden and exposed stations which commonly appear in mesh environments might remarkably deteriorate the network performance. Moreover, QoS requirements especially the delay requirement is a great challenge for delivering real time services by means of multi-hop operation. We present a link-layer protocol named Wireless Channel-oriented Ad-hoc Multi-hop Broadband, or W-CHAMB, which is able to perform multi-hop delivery of multi-media services in mesh networks. The W-CHAMB protocol is based on TDMA/TDD technology, operating in a fully distributed manner on a single frequency channel. Multi-hop forwarding might take place simultaneously in different time slots. The QoS of accepted traffic is well guaranteed by making use of the channel-oriented structure. The simulation results indicate that the W-CHAMB protocol can efficiently exploit the channel capacity for delivering various traffic flows under their QoS requirements in a multi-hop mesh network. The W-CHAMB protocol is a candidate link layer solution for Task Group s (Mesh WLAN) of IEEE Working Group 802.11.
mesh networks multi-hop operation qos synchronization medium access control multimedia ad-hoc networks