Analytical Model for Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF Mechanism in Multi-Radio Wireless Networks

Abstract

Wireless mesh networks suffer of scalability problems when the number of nodes grows. To solve this issue, wireless mesh networks with multi-interface nodes were introduced. In such networks it is possible to use multiple channels to implement spatial reuse of frequencies. These solutions offer a huge throughput performance improvement but they increase the complexity due to the need of implementing a selection interface policy. One of the most simple interface selection policy is random choice. In this paper we provide an analytical analysis of the Uniform Random Interface Selection strategy applied in a 802.11 DCF multi-radio network. Then we also present a set of performance results for the throughput and discard probability in function of the number of nodes and the number of interfaces.