INFORMATION

Volume 16, Number 10, pp.7611-7624

ISSN 1343-4500
2013 International Information Institute

Minimizing Interference in Wireless Mesh Networks using multi

channel and multi radio
Mohammad Siraj*
* PSATRI, College of Engineering, King Saud University,
P.O.Box 800, Riyadh-11421, Saudi Arabia,
E-mail: siraj@ksu.edu.sa

Abstract
Wireless Mesh network is a promising technology which has become popular with network
providers providing last mile broadband internet connectivity to the end users. This popularity is due to
the fact that it inter operates well with diverse wireless systems and provides robust fault tolerance with
a high degree of redundancy and reliability. During relaying, Even if some of the mesh nodes die, there
exist many other alternative nodes to serve the end users. In addition, multi-hop WMNs increases the
coverage area. A common problem in WMN is the performance degradation as the network size
increases. This is due to the interference arising from the neighbors and varying traffic load. This is a
critical issue in WMN, which is due to the co channel interference in WMN utilizing individual channel
and singular radio. One of the approaches to increase performance of WMNs is to use multiple channel
multiple radio (MCMR) in each node (mesh router). In this work, a critical issue of performance
degradation in WMN, by incorporating MCMR in WMNs is addressed. This performance has been
evaluated by simulating it in our protocol in OPNET Modeler 17.1 PL1. Simulation results show the
effectiveness of using MCMR.
Key Words: Wireless mesh network, MCMR, Throughput, Packet Delivery Ratio

1. Introduction
IEEE 802.11 Multi Hop Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) [1] are self-forming, selfhealing and self-organizing. Their easy configuration and deployment make them an
economical, reliable and simple solution that can be implemented anywhere at any time. The
end users can use WMN to access the internet by connecting to any of the routers. WMNs
have emerged as a fundamental technology for the next generation of Wireless Networking.
They are formed by mesh routers and mesh clients as shown in Figure 1. WMNs are being
investigated at this moment to support video-related applications such as video streaming,
multimedia messaging, teleconference, voice over IP, and video telemedicine due to its
superior characteristics compared with other wireless standards, including mobility, high
data rate, and low cost infrastructure. They are also being utilized in providing internet
connectivity to rural areas and in disaster management. With such infrastructure in place, a
number of critical medical problems can be addressed with the help of WMNs and the

stability of the infrastructure backbone can be done. In a wireless mesh network, the capacity
is degraded by interference from concurrent wireless transmissions. The Maximum
theoretical capacity in such networks at each node is given by O (1/
achievable capacity is O (1/ n log n )

n) whereas the

where n is the number of nodes in the network in

random ad-hoc network ideal situations [3]. Through experimentation, it is found that in
IEEE 802.11 [4], which uses a contention-based medium access control the throughput
degrades approximately to, of the raw channel bandwidth [5]. Equation for the achievable
capacity illustrates that throughput capacity of a single channel WMN degrades significantly
as the network size grows. One of the key factors for this rapid degradation is from cochannel interference as the transmission in a single channel WMNs is a half-duplex radio per
node. To minimize co channel interference one of the effective means is to go for multiple
channels and multiple radios (MCMR) for each node. Scheduling approach for CR- WMN.

Figure 1 Wireless Mesh Architecture [2]

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In section 2, some recent research
related work in this area has been discussed. Section 3, describes the network model to be
considered for classic WMN. In section 4, Load Balancing Interference Aware Routing
Protocol implemented with the best route discovery algorithm is described.
presents performance evaluation followed by conclusion and future work.

Section 5

2 Related Work
Interference is a key factor in WMNs as the transmissions from one user interferes with
the transmissions and receptions of other users. Due to the interference, the capacity of WMN
is constrained [6]. Researchers have tried to investigate the impact of interference on WMN
through practical scenarios such as

test bed environment[7]

where it was found that

interference not only degrades the performance for single path flow but also for multi path
flows. Due to interference, a high quality video streaming service could not be delivered as a
high percentage of packets were lost. Siraj and Bakar [8] demonstrated the impact of
Interference on Multi-hop Wireless Mesh Network. They showed how the performance is
degraded due to interference.
In [9] a MAC protocol was proposed for resolving channel assignments in connections
going through multiple wireless hops in WMNs by considering interference range issue and
hidden node problems. In [10] an algorithm was proposed, which assigned the same channel
to the two links that were within the vicinity of interference range of each other, which were
a source of co-channel interference resulting in a decrease in network throughput. This
algorithm was based on two-way interference-range edge coloring. In [11] performance
analysis of WMN was done by modeling the maximum throughput per cell and average
system delay of the backbone and the gateways in the WMN. This analysis was based on a
general network model with two key considerations, the random access mechanism in the
MAC and the equivalent queuing network of the backbone. Packet arrival distribution and the
packet departure distribution at the intermediate mesh routers and gateway nodes separately
were analyzed. Maximum throughput per cell and the average packet delivery delay for the
backbone of the WMN was evaluated. The performance study of the influence of the number
of forwarding intermediate and gateway nodes on the system delay at the gateway nodes was
based on this evaluation. In multi-hop networks to improve end to end throughput the per hop
throughput has to be increased which in which in turn depends critically on the number of
simultaneous transmissions that can be achieved in a given network area. This can be
achieved using multiple channels. Nevertheless, with only one radio per node, channel
switching is required. This switching delay grows with the number of channels. For example,
the switching delay for the present 802.11 hardware ranges from a few milliseconds to a few
hundred milliseconds [12]. Such frequent channel switching adversely affects the end-to-end
delay performance of the WMN [13]. Routing in MCMR networks is closely related to
channel assignment [14]. Researchers have studied the problem of routing and channel

assignment in MCMR [15-20]. In [21] the delay and throughput performance of multichannel wireless infrastructure networks was evaluated with ring and grid topologies. Their
analysis is based on the transmission range, interference range and sensing range. In [22] the
capacity of a multi-channel multi-radio wireless networks using linear programming. The
work of [23] was extended to model the throughput gain of network coding in two way, star,
and general network topologies [24]. The authors of [25] examined the queuing delay of a
MCMR WMN under various channel fading conditions.

3. Network Model
An arbitrarily distributed wireless mesh network with n nodes can be defined by a directed
graph, G= (V, E):
Where V is the set of vertices representing nodes of WMN; E is the set of directional edges
representing radio links between the nodes.
Let dij the distance between nodes, i and j, where each node is equipped with radio, which
has: rt transmission range and ri interference range; with constraint ri > rt.
There exists a link {i, j} between node j and k provided.
djk ri

and i j

Thus, the link between two neighbor nodes j and k of WMN is represented by the directed
edge.
{i,j} E

A node j can successfully transmit to node k if the following two conditions are met.
a)

dij rt

(1)

b)

dkj rik where nk is the neighbor node.

(2)

Figure 2. Nodes Constraint Diagram

Fig. 2 shows presence of six nodes in WMN. When node 2 is transmitting and if node 4
wants to transmit it cannot transmit due to (1) and (2). Similarly, nodes 1 and 2 cannot,
whereas node 5 and 6 can, transmit. Fig. 2 also shows that node 4 will cause interference if it
tries to connect. Based on the above approach, an interference graph Gi can be constructed.
An interference graph can be represented by Gi = (Vi, Ei)
The vertex set is identical to the directed graph G representing nodes of WMN.

There

exists a directed edge from node j to node k if

a) a signal from node j is strong enough to disturb node k but
b) it cannot be decoded correctly by k
So if there are two communication links {j,k} and {l,m} and if they are not able to transmit,
it indicates that there exists an edge between them. So an edge for the Interference graph Gi
can be drawn between {j,k} and {l,m} based on the following conditions, i.e. djm rj or dlk
rl. With the help of Interference graph, Gi and vertex set Ei, an interference vector can be
defined between any given link say link {i,j} and all the links in E. If {k,l} {i,j} and there
is a link between link {i,j} and link {k,l} then I {i,j},{k,l} = 1 otherwise it is 0. Similarly,
Interference vector for all the links can be computed and an interference constraint matrix
|E||E| can be constructed. This constraint is shown by the Fig. 2.

4. Load balancing Interference Aware Routing Protocol (LBIARP)

LBIARP has been implemented with LBIARM [26] in AODV protocol. This protocol is
based on the best route discovery algorithm. It selects the route which has minimum

interference, high throughput and low end to end delay. The algorithm is as follows:

Algorithm for best route discovery:

Source Node S Broadcasts to Gateway Node G
if (Intermediate Node I receives Route_Request) then
Calculate path load from S to I using the following equation:
LBIARM =
(1 a) ETTi + a ETTi * N i
ip

ip

Create a Reverse Route to S

If Route_Request is duplicate discard Route_Request Packet.
if (I is D)
unicast Route_Reply to S.
else
rebroadcast Route_Request
endif
if (I receives Route_Reply) and (I is not S) then
I forward Route_Reply to S
else
S updates path load.
endif
if (S does not receive Route_Reply for a certain time period t) then
S broadcasts (Route_Request_Error)
endif
if I receives Route_Request_Error and (I is not G)
forward Route_Request_Error.
else
G updates its links_table.
G sends Route_Request to D
endif

5 Performance Evaluation
5.1 Simulation Environment
The performance evaluation of MCMR was done by simulating it with OPNET Modeler 17.1
PL1. MCMR was implemented in the LBIARP protocol and compared with the classic
WMN using Single Channel Single Radio (SCSR). The network topology as shown in Figure
3 was used for simulation. It consists of 16 static mesh routers uniformly randomly placed in
a 4 X 4 grid in a 1000 X 1000m2 area. The average distance between each pair of two one
hop nodes is the same. The interference range is set to be approximately equal as all mesh
routers are with similar transmission powers. The source nodes send Constant Bit rate (CBR)
traffic with UDP as transport protocol, consisting of 512 byte packets with a sending rate of
20 packets/second. The center mesh router was selected as the Gateway node. The following
simulation parameters were used (Table 1)

Table 1: Simulation Parameters

Parameter

Value

Network Scenario

Campus Network

Network Grid

1000 X 1000

Number of Nodes

16

Number of radios

Number of Channels

Packet Size

512

Interference range

40 m

Traffic Model

Constant Bit rate (CBR)

Path Loss Model

Two ray

Transmission Power

10 mW

Queue size at Routers

50 Kbytes

Physical layer protocol

PHY 802.11g

CBR senders rate

20 packets/sec

Transmission rate at

54 Mbits/sec

Physical layer

Figure 3. Node placement with 16 nodes in 1000m x 1000m

5.2 Performance Metrics

For the evaluation following metrics were used.

Packet Delivery Ratio: This is the ratio between the number of data packets successfully
received by the destination node and the total number of data packets sent by the source node.
This metric reflects the degree of reliability of the routing protocol.
End-to-end delay of data packets: This is the delay between the time at which the data packet
originated from the source and the time it reaches the destination, and includes all possible
delays caused by queuing for transmission at the node, buffering the packet for a detour,
retransmission delay at the MAC layer, propagation delay and transmission delay. This
metric reflects the quality of routing protocol.
Throughput: This is defined as the amount of data that is transmitted through the network per

unit time (i.e. data bytes delivered to their destinations per second).

5.3 Simulation Results and Analysis

5.3.1 Packet Delivery Ratio
Figure 4 shows the percentage of the packet delivery ratio between MCMR and SCSR in
presence of interfering traffic arising from the interfering nodes. From the below figures, it is
observed that when the traffic load is light (10 - 20 packets/s). Both the algorithms perform
almost similarly as there is less medium contention and usage. A single channel would have
been adequate for this case. When the traffic load is moderate to heavy (above 40 packets/s),
the MCMR advantage is clearly observed, which leads to MCMR outperforming with the
increase in traffic Load. For instance, under heavy load, 70 packets/s, the PDRs of MCMR
and SCSR are 82% and 35% respectively, a difference of 47%.

Figure 4. Packet Delivery Ratio vs. Traffic Load

5.3.2 End to End Delay

Figure 5 shows the end to end delay. It is observed MCMR performs better than SCSR. There
is a significant difference between them. This is due to the balancing act of MCMR, which
minimizes interference due to the selection of an optimum route. This route is based on less
interference taking into consideration varying traffic load. When the traffic load is increased,

it increases the end to end delay. MCMR improved the end to end delay as it balances the
traffic flows and avoids congestion causing less delay.

Figure 5 End to End Delay vs. Traffic load

5.3.3 Throughput
Figure 6 shows throughput comparison between MCMR and SCSR in presence of interfering
traffic arising from the interfering nodes. The throughput in MCMR is greater because SCSR
creates congestion areas. At each hop, there is a delay of data packets. MCMR creates quality
links with fewer delays, which are less loaded. As the number of channels increases, the
throughput increases. The higher the number of channels, the less time spent contending for
the medium to create congestion areas. It is seen that MCMR performs better than SCSR

Figure 6 Throughput (average) vs. Traffic Load

Conclusion and Future Work

A common problem in WMN is the performance degradation with multiple hops. This is due
to Interference of the neighbors and varying traffic load. This is a critical issue in WMN.
Performance of WMN is degraded as the number of nodes increases. In this paper, to enhance
the performance of WMN, an attempt has been made to incorporate MCMR in WMNs.
Simulation results indicate that the results obtained by using MCMR enhances the
performance significantly. In the future, it will be interesting to see the performance after
implementing multicasting in MCMR WMNs

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research, College of Engineering,
King Saud University.

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*Corresponding author: Mohammad Siraj

PSATRI, College of Engineering,
King Saud University, P.O.Box 800, Riyadh-11421, Saudi Arabia,
Email: siraj@ksu.edu.sa