Publication

Abstract : This paper applies the concept of subnet virtualization to the edge network comprising of the multi-gateway Wi-Fi mesh. A necessary and sufficient condition for improving the throughput of Wi-Fi mesh network (WMN) is proposed in the paper. A holistic approach of optimizing the mesh topology by fair distribution of gateways (GW) is developed. Subnets (partitions) are created within the mesh such that each partition has one GW and approximately equal amount of Mesh Routers. Thereafter an overload estimation process is defined which indicates the instance when the WMN is overloaded and a Load Management Scheme (LMS) has to be applied. A Steady State Load equation is derived based on the current processing load of each GW. Thereafter a stability condition is defined which can avoid triggering chain of load transitions from one neighbor GW to another. Simulation studies presented in the paper show that after providing a conventional WMN with the features of the proposed LMS, the throughput became more than double, there was a decrease of 22% in the average packet delay and a decrease of 90% in the number of packets dropped. © 2019, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.