Channel Requirements for Interference-Free Wireless Mesh Networks to Achieve Maximum Throughput

In a multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh network, a channel assignment that is based on a fixed number of available frequency channels may cause co-channel interference, which degrades the network throughput. We address this problem by ensuring interference-free communication among the mesh nodes. The main purpose of this work is to determine the minimum number of non-overlapping frequency channels required for interference-free channel assignment in order to achieve the maximum network throughput while maintaining fairness among the multiple network flows, given the location of the mesh nodes and the number of their half-duplex radio interfaces. To minimize the number of channels required, we apply our Select x for less than x Topology Control Algorithm to build the connectivity graph instead of using the classical approach based on maximum power (MP). We show that our approach outperforms the MP-based approach in terms of the number of channels required as well as the links to channels ratio for all node-degrees.