Achieving MAC layer fairness in wireless mesh backbone based vehicular network

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Network is a promising technology for using as the backbone for Vehicular networks where the roadside access points form a mesh network to forward packets between vehicular client nodes and gateway node that is connected with wired Internet. Due to the dynamic vehicular traffic characteristics, the load at roadside access points varies with time. IEEE 802.11 DCF based MAC protocol shows substantial unfairness in this situation because of dynamic traffic load and multi-hop relay. The APs act as the relay nodes that needs to forward the relayed traffic as well as its own towards the gateway. In this paper an IEEE 802.11 DCF based MAC protocol is proposed that provides proportional fairness among the vehicular clients and roadside access points. Simulation result shows that the proposed scheme performs better than standard IEEE 802.11 DCF based MAC protocol in terms of fairness without loss in throughput.