Stony Brook Mesh Router: Architecting a Multi-Radio Multihop Wireless LAN Samir R. Das (Joint work with Vishnu Navda, Mahesh Marina and Anand Kashyap) Computer Science Department SUNY at Stony Brook samir@cs.sunysb.edu http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~samir
A New Opportunity Has Arrived! Linksys WRT54G access point/router runs Linux. User programmable. Decent processor and memory. Costs $70. Several router platforms provide multiple PC/mini-PCI/PCI card interfaces. Decent processor and memory. Can run FreeBSD/Linux. Costs $250-$400. What a systems researcher can do with all these?
Stony Brook Wireless Router Wired Backbone Access Points Clients Ethernet Traditional Wireless LAN needs “wired” connectivity to access points. Deployment slow and expensive, particularly for wide area.
Get rid of the wires! Use a mesh routing backbone. Access Points/ Mesh Routers Clients Wired Backbone Ethernet Use a mesh routing backbone. Clients can associate with any access point/router. Complete transparency. Multiple radio interfaces on each router assigned to different bands/channels.
Architectural Choices Clients run on infrastructure mode. Associate to a nearby AP. Unaware of the wireless backbone. Use WDS (wireless distribution system) for inter-AP communication. Use a routing protocol for inter-AP routing. Link state-based routing. Choice of link cost metric? Multiple radios on each AP Channel assignment problem.
Routing Layer 2 handoff triggers routing updates. Mesh network cloud of APs Layer 2 handoff triggers routing updates.
Routing Mesh network cloud of APs Handoff delay with Prism2-based cards and HostAP driver = 240ms at L2 + 28ms per hop at L3.
Multihop Relaying Performance with Multiple Channels TCP throughput Setup: 802.11b prism2-based cards. HostAP driver. Relaying on WDS links. Gains over single channel not always spectacular. Suspect radio leakage. Base case: 1 hop throughput 5.5 Mbps
Channel Assignment Problem: Observations and Approaches Channel switching takes time (~100ms) in COTS hardware Rule out dynamic approaches. Statically? Semi-dynamically? Channel assignment is a topology control problem. Two neighboring node can talk only when they have a radio on a common channel. Ideally, one should jointly solve channel assignment and routing. Our approach: Assign channels to radios to minimize interference (objective), but preserve original topology (constraint).
Conflict Graph-based Greedy Algorithm Visits nodes in a certain order and assigns channels to radios such that all links from this node gets a channel. Channel selection based on a greedy heuristic. Maintain a conflict graph on the side to model interference. Compute the heuristic on this graph. Centralized; but can be distributed. 3 nodes 2 radios/node 3 non-overlapping channels
Conflict Graph-based Greedy Algorithm Visits nodes in a certain order and assigns channels to radios such that all links from this node gets a channel. Channel selection based on a greedy heuristic. Maintain a conflict graph on the side to model interference. Compute the heuristic on this graph. Centralized; but can be distributed. 3 nodes 2 radios/node 3 non-overlapping channels
Conflict Graph-based Greedy Algorithm Visits nodes in a certain order and assigns channels to radios such that all links from this node gets a channel. Channel selection based on a greedy heuristic. Maintain a conflict graph on the side to model interference. Compute the heuristic on this graph. Centralized; but can be distributed. 3 nodes 2 radios/node 3 non-overlapping channels
Conflict Graph-based Greedy Algorithm Visits nodes in a certain order and assigns channels to radios such that all links from this node gets a channel. Channel selection based on a greedy heuristic. Maintain a conflict graph on the side to model interference. Compute the heuristic on this graph. Centralized; but can be distributed. 3 nodes 2 radios/node 3 non-overlapping channels
The Devil is in the Model Interference model (used in objective) Current model: Two links on the same channel with a common node interferes. Nothing else interferes. Future: Model overlapping channels and radio leakage. Model interference beyond one hop. Factor in load? What to optimize? Minimize max interference. Maximize no. of concurrent transmissions. Topology (used as a constraint) Current model: Preserve the original topology. Future: Use the sub-topology actually used by routing.
Can iterative approaches help in lieu of joint optimization? Routing Influences interference Influences topology Channel Assignment Convergence? Practicality?
Random Graph-based Simulations 50 nodes. Dense network. 12 independent channels.
NS-2 Simulations 50 node. Dense network. 9.5 x Several orders of magnitude 50 node. Dense network. MAC layer capacity with Poisson traffic on each link.
Summary Extend infrastructure-mode WLAN to a mesh network. Complete client transparency. Handoff driven routing update. Multiple radio on each router. Channel assignment problem.