Channel quality and utilization metric for interference estimation in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks have emerged as an architectural shift from traditional wireless networks for providing ubiquitous coverage. The mesh routers equipped with multiple 802.11 commodity network cards provide high throughput by maximizing the simultaneous transmissions on multiple channels. However, the selection of a channel is affected by various factors and it requires accurate knowledge of channel conditions. In addition, an imprecise selection of the channel requires channel reassignment, which significantly reduces the network performance. The existing schemes have suffered to gratifying the aggregate effect of interference. In this paper, we propose a Channel Quality and Utilization Metric (QUAM) that selects less interfering channels. The QUAM employs MAC specification parameters to acquire utilization awareness of various channels in the vicinity. The channel utilization helps to cater the effect of co-channel interference, whereas, to accommodate the impact of adjacent channel interference; the channels are further quantified by considering the channel quality. The proposed metric is evaluated through extensive simulations experiments. The simulation results demonstrated the validation of QUAM with a significant improvement in terms of network throughput and a decline in network delay and packet losses.