Cross-Layer Design for QoS in Wireless Mesh Networks

Cross-layer design for quality of service (QoS) in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) has attracted much research interest recently. Such networks are expected to support various types of applications with different and multiple QoS and grade-of-service (GoS) requirements. In order to achieve this, several key technologies spanning all layers, from physical up to network layer, have to be exploited and novel algorithms for harmonic and efficient layer interaction must be designed. Unfortunately most of the existing works on cross-layer design focus on the interaction of up to two layers while the GoS concept in WMNs has been overlooked. In this paper, we propose a unified framework that exploits the physical channel properties and multi-user diversity gain of WMNs and by performing intelligent route selection and connection admission control provides both QoS and GoS to a variety of underlying applications. Extensive simulation results show that our proposed framework can successfully satisfy multiple QoS requirements while it achieves higher network throughput and lower outage as compared to other scheduling, routing and admission control schemes.