Title: Performance evaluation of mixed-bias scheduling schemes for wireless mesh networks

Authors: Jason B. Ernst; Joseph Alexander Brown

Addresses: School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada ' School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

Abstract: Typically, peripheral nodes in a multi-hop wireless network experience poor performance from starvation, congestion, queue build-up and contention along the path towards internet gateways. We propose three adaptive methods for scheduling based on mixed-bias scheduling which aim to prioritise mesh routers near the gateways to ensure they can handle their own traffic and peripheral traffic. We also give an overview of the mixed-bias approach for scheduling. We then evaluate the performance of each technique in comparison with each other and the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. Each solution is evaluated based on average packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end delay. Two experiments were performed to examine the performance. First, we studied the effect of varying the inter-arrival rate of the packets. Second we examined the effect of changing the number of sources. In all experiments, the proposed approaches perform at least as well or better than IEEE 802.11 DCF.

Keywords: IEEE 802.11 DCF; co-existence; parameter computation; feedback; evolutionary algorithms; evolutionary programming; wireless mesh networks; Tabu search; adaptive scheduling; performance evaluation; mixed-bias scheduling; wireless networks; packet delivery ratio; end-to-end delay.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSC.2013.051984

International Journal of Space-Based and Situated Computing, 2013 Vol.3 No.1, pp.22 - 34

Received: 09 Apr 2012
Accepted: 21 Jul 2012
Published online: 23 Aug 2014 *

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