Traffic-aware channel width adaptation in long-distance 802.11 mesh networks

We consider the traffic adaptive channel allocation problem in long-distance 802.11 mesh networks. Our approach is to exploit the capability provided by 802.11 hardware to use different channel widths and assign channel widths to links based on their relative traffic volume. We show that this traffic-aware channel width assignment problem is NP-complete and propose a polynomial time, greedy channel allocation algorithm that guarantees valid channel allocations for each node. Evaluation of the proposed algorithm via simulations of real network topologies shows that it consistently outperforms the current approach of fixed width allocation due to its ability to adapt to spatio-temporal variations in traffic demands.