Channel Assignment Exploiting Partially Overlapping Channels for Wireless Mesh Networks

Unlike most IEEE 802.11-based ad hoc networks, in which only a single channel is used, wireless mesh networks allow the simultaneous use of multiple channels to increase the aggregated capacity. Many efforts have been taken to better exploit multiple non-overlapped channels. Although the IEEE 802.11 b/g standards, which govern the unlicensed 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band, provide 11 channels, only three of them, namely 1, 6 and 11 are non-overlapped. In this paper, the authors propose a new channel assignment scheme named Channel Assignment Exploiting Partially Overlapping Channels (CAEPO). CAEPO can not only assign non-overlapped channels, but also exploit partially overlapping channels.