Hop-Degree Model for Fair Resource Allocation in Wireless Backbone Multi-Hop Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) has recently emerged as a cost-effective solution for the next generation of Wireless Networking. It has the potential to be widely deployed and widely used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) worldwide. Unfortunately, current standards and protocols are severely inadequate to achieve the architectural design goals of wireless backhaul multi-hop me- sh networks. For instance, existing standards and protocols result in severe unfairness, and in some cases, starvation, for users located in longer hop lengths from the Internet/wired entry point. In this paper, the resource allocation in the context of fairness is argued. A model called "Hop-Degree", which removes spatial bias and allows fair usage of network resources for the users, is designed and developed. Analytical studies and extensive simulation experiment results demonstrate that the Hop-Degree model significantly improves user fairness and eliminates the starvation problem. Overhead comparison of the proposed scheme with previously related schemes shows that the proposed scheme performs significantly better.