A queue-length based distributed scheduling for CSMA-driven Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

Although Wireless Mesh Networks using CSMA MAC protocol (CSMA-driven WMNs) have been extensively studied, severe collisions mainly due to hidden terminals prevent us from realizing practical networks. In this paper, we propose a new distributed scheduling scheme for CSMA-driven WMNs that significantly reduce collision caused by hidden terminals. In our scheduling, we propagate queue-length information within two-hop neighborhood via data and Ack frames, and avoid collision by allowing transmission to only the node that has the longest queue length among its two-hop neighbors. Our scheduling scheme is fully distributed and requires low overhead so that it works within the framework of CSMA. Through evaluation, we found that the proposed scheduling mechanism significantly reduces the number of collisions, resulting in significant improvement of communication quality of CSMA-driven WMNs.