Molecular architecture for autonomic wireless mesh networks

We consider wireless mesh networks that use 802.11 wireless LANs for interconnecting mesh routers. When mesh routers use only one network interface and a single radio channel, performance of packet forwarding quickly degrades with the number of hops due to channel contention and spatial problems such as hidden, exposed, masked, and blocked nodes. We observe that capacity of a wireless mesh network strongly depends on the ability of nearby mesh routers to communicate in parallel, which is only possible if the neighbor routers that may interfere use different channels.