Dynamic end-to-end capacity in IEEE 802.16 wireless mesh networks

The IEEE 802.16 standard defines mesh mode as one of its two operational modes in medium access control (MAC). In the mesh mode, peer-to-peer communication between subscriber stations (SSs) is allowed, and transmissions can be routed via other SSs across multiple hops. In such an IEEE 802.16 mesh network, accurate and reliable determination of dynamic link capacity and end-to-end capacity of a given multi-hop route is crucial for robust network control and management. The dynamic capacities are difficult to determine in a distributed system due to decentralized packet scheduling and interference between communicating nodes caused by the broadcast nature of radio propagation. In this paper, we first propose a method for computing the dynamic link capacity between two mesh nodes, and extend that to determine the dynamic end-to-end capacity bounds of a multi-hop route based on the concept of Bottleneck Zone. The physical deployments of networks are also considered in the capacity estimation. We demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of our methods for computing dynamic link capacity and end-to-end capacity bounds through extensive simulations. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.