Interference-Aware Channel Assignment in

Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks

Krishna N. Ramachandran, Elizabeth M. Belding, Kevin C. Almeroth, Milind M. Buddhikot
University of California at Santa Barbara Lucent Bell Labs, Holmdel
{krishna, ebelding, almeroth}@cs.ucsb.edu
[email protected]
Abstract The capacity problem in wireless mesh networks
can be alleviated by equipping the mesh routers with multiple radios tuned to non-overlapping channels. However, channel assignment presents a challenge because co-located wireless networks
are likely to be tuned to the same channels. The resulting increase
in interference can adversely affect performance. This paper
presents an interference-aware channel assignment algorithm and
protocol for multi-radio wireless mesh networks that address
this interference problem. The proposed solution intelligently
assigns channels to radios to minimize interference within the
mesh network and between the mesh network and co-located
wireless networks. It utilizes a novel interference estimation
technique implemented at each mesh router. An extension to
the conflict graph model, the multi-radio conflict graph, is used
to model the interference between the routers. We demonstrate
our solutions practicality through the evaluation of a prototype
implementation in a IEEE 802.11 testbed. We also report on
an extensive evaluation via simulations. In a sample multi-radio
scenario, our solution yields performance gains in excess of 40%
compared to a static assignment of channels.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Typical deployments of static multi-hop wireless networks,
called wireless mesh networks, utilize routers equipped with
only one IEEE 802.11 radio. IEEE 802.11 radios are typically
single-channel radios. As a result, single-radio mesh networks
can suffer from serious capacity degradation due to the halfduplex nature of the wireless medium [10].
Fortunately, the IEEE 802.11 PHY specification permits the
simultaneous operation of multiple non-overlapping channels.
For example, three non-overlapping channels in the 2.4GHz
band can be simultaneously used. The IEEE 802.11a specification allows up to twelve non-overlapping channels in the
5.0 GHz band. By deploying multi-radio routers in wireless
mesh networks and assigning the radios to non-overlapping
channels, the routers can communicate simultaneously with
minimal interference in spite of being in direct interference
range of each other. Therefore, the capacity of wireless mesh
networks can be increased.
In equipping routers with multiple radios, a nave strategy
would be to equip each router with the number of radios equal
to the number of orthogonal channels. However, this strategy
is economically prohibitive due to the significant number
of non-overlapping channels. Furthermore, small form-factor
embedded systems used for manufacturing routers support
only a limited number of radios. Consequently, using all nonoverlapping channels on a mesh router is still not a viable
option.

The assignment of channels to a mesh router then becomes

a problem of choosing which channels to assign to which of its
radios. A simple technique is to use static channel assignment.
However, with the explosive growth in WiFi deployments
that operate in the same (unlicensed) spectrum as wireless
mesh networks, any static assignment will likely result in
the operation of the mesh on channels that are also used
by co-located WiFi deployments. The resulting increase in
interference can degrade the performance of the mesh network.
This paper addresses the channel assignment problem and
specifically investigates the dynamic assignment of channels in a wireless mesh network. We present a centralized,
interference-aware channel assignment algorithm and a corresponding channel assignment protocol aimed at improving the
capacity of wireless mesh networks by making use of all available non-overlapping channels. The algorithm intelligently
selects channels for the mesh radios in order to minimize
interference within the mesh network and between the mesh
network and co-located wireless networks. Each mesh router
utilizes a novel interference estimation technique to measure
the level of interference in its neighborhood because of colocated wireless networks. The algorithm utilizes an extension
to the conflict graph model [14], the Multi-radio Conflict
Graph (MCG), to model interference between the multi-radio
routers in the mesh. The MCG is used in conjunction with the
interference estimates to assign channels to the radios.
One potential pitfall of dynamic channel assignment is that
it can result in a change in the network topology. Topology
changes can lead to sub-optimal routing and even network
partitioning in case of node failures. The proposed solution,
therefore, ensures that channel assignment does not alter the
network topology by mandating that one radio on each mesh
router operate on a default channel. A second potential pitfall
is that channel assignment can result in disruption of flows
when the mesh radios are reconfigured to different frequencies.
To prevent flow disruption, link redirection is implemented
at each mesh router. This technique redirects flows over the
default channel until the channel assignment succeeds.
We evaluate our proposed solution through simulations in
Qualnet. We utilize the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR)
protocol [8] and the Weighted Cumulative Expected Transmission Time (WCETT) metric [9] for route selection. We
demonstrate the practicality of our proposed solution via the
evaluation of a prototype implementation in a multi-radio
IEEE 802.11b testbed.

1-4244-0222-0/06/$20.00 (c)2006 IEEE

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the Proceedings IEEE Infocom.

A. Research Contributions
To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first solution
to address the problem of dynamic channel assignment in
wireless mesh networks in the presence of interference from
co-located wireless networks. A key goal in the design of the
proposed solution has been to make the solution amenable
to easy implementation using currently available radios. This
differentiates our work from several proposed solutions (surveyed in Section IX) which require either specialized as yet
unavailable radios or knowledge about the network such as
anticipated traffic patterns and the specific paths to be traversed
by network flows.
Specifically, the contributions of this paper are as follows:
A dynamic, interference-aware channel assignment algorithm that minimizes interference between the mesh
network and co-located wireless networks.
A multi-radio conflict graph, an extension to the wellknown conflict graph model, to model the interference
relationship between multi-radio routers in a wireless
mesh network.
A novel interference estimation scheme that routers use
to estimate the interference level in their neighborhoods.
A link redirection protocol that prevents the disruption of
flows during channel assignment.
A comprehensive performance study that shows significant throughput improvements in the presence of varying
interference levels, which are validated through empirical
measurements on a prototype implementation.
B. Paper Outline
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section II discusses the effect of channel assignment on network topology. In Section III, we formulate the channel
assignment problem. Section IV describes our interference
estimation technique and the multi-radio conflict graph model.
In Section V, we present our centralized channel assignment
algorithm. We discuss the challenges we addressed during the
development of our prototype implementation in Section VI.
Section VII presents results from our simulation-based evaluation, while results from our prototype evaluation are presented
in Section VIII. In section IX, we summarize related work, and
Section X concludes the paper.
II. C HANNEL A SSIGNMENT AND N ETWORK T OPOLOGY
In a multi-radio mesh network, channel assignment to radios
can alter the network topology. Consider the example four
node topology in Figure 1(a). Here, node C is equipped with
three radios and the other nodes (A, B, and D) have one radio
each. Each link in the figure is labeled with its channel number.
Figure 1(a) illustrates the topology when all radios are tuned
to channel one. Figure 1(b) illustrates the change in network
topology after channel assignment.
Alterations in the network topology have three main drawbacks. First, subsequent node failures have a higher probability
of causing network partitions. Consequently, portions of the
mesh may become unreachable, resulting in the disruption

B
1

A
1

(a)
Fig. 1.

D
1

A
1

(b)

D
3

A
1

D
3

(c)

Network topology with varying channel assignments.

of flows. This is clearly seen in Figure 1(c). When node C

fails, the four node network is partitioned into three different
clusters. Reconnection of the network would require complex
synchronization schemes to be implemented at the mesh
routers [25].
Second, topology alterations can result in sub-optimal routes
between node pairs with respect to some metric, such as
throughput, delay, or reliability. To illustrate how this can
occur, consider again Figure 1(a). Node A can communicate
with node B on a one hop path. After channel assignment, A
can communicate with B only over a two hop path via C, as
shown in Figure 1(b). Selection of a path with a higher hopcount is not preferred for three reasons: (1) longer, frequency
diversified paths often yield worse performance than shorter
paths; (2) the interference foot-print of a flow on a higher
hop-count path is naturally greater; and (3) a longer path is
more prone to failure. Note, however, that we do not claim
that all longer paths are likely to perform poorly compared to
shorter paths because the performance of each path alternative
is likely to vary with factors such as traffic pattern, node
placement, radio characteristics, and terrain. Nevertheless, we
stress that it is challenging to accurately predict, in practice,
which channel assignment alternative and resulting network
topology configuration will yield optimum performance.
The third drawback of altering a networks topology is that it
affects existing flows. For example, let us assume that link CD
in Figure 1(b) is assigned a new channel. The process of
channel assignment must be accurately coordinated; otherwise,
cases may arise where one radio on the link switches to the
new frequency but the second radio does not because a control
message is either lost or delayed. Consequently, any flows
from D to the rest of the network that existed at the time of the
channel assignment are disrupted during the switch. Overcoming such cases is challenging in practice because configuration
of the radios requires time-synchronized coordination between
the mesh routers during channel assignment.
Because of these drawbacks associated with network topology changes, we advocate that topology alterations should be
avoided. We mandate this by requiring that all routers in the
mesh network designate one of their radios to be a default
radio interface. This default radio is of the same physical
layer technology, either 802.11a, 802.11b, or 802.11g, and is
tuned to a common channel throughout the mesh. The default
channel carries both control and data traffic.
This strategy has several advantages. First, it prevents
changes in the topology of the network because routers will
discover otherwise disconnected neighbors by communicating
over the default radio interface. Second, overcoming node

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the Proceedings IEEE Infocom.

failure is simplified because a router will be able to choose

alternate paths to route around a failed node. Third, the routing
protocol will now have the option of selecting a path that is
not frequency diversified if it has better performance characteristics than a frequency diversified alternative. As a final
advantage, any disruption of flows during channel assignment
can be avoided by redirecting flows over the default radio until
the assignment completes. The redirection technique is further
elaborated in Section VI. We consider the reassignment of the
default channel in Section VI-D.
III. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
The channel assignment algorithm we propose in this paper
is designed for wireless mesh networks. Routers in such
networks are stationary. However, user devices, such as laptops
and PDAs, can be mobile. Such devices associate with routers
that also function as access points.
Figure 2 illustrates our model of a multi-radio mesh network. In our model, the mesh routers are assumed to be
equipped with multiple IEEE 802.11 radios, such as 802.11a,
802.11b, or 802.11g. The routers need not all be equipped with
the same number of radios nor do they need all three types
of radios. Depending on the number of radios at each mesh
router, we classify the routers into two categories: (1) MultiRadio mesh routers (MRs); and (2) Single-Radio mesh routers
(SRs). We mandate that each MR and SR in the network be
equipped with one radio, called the default radio, which is of
the same physical layer type, e.g. 802.11b, and tuned to the
same channel as motivated in Section II.
At least one router in the mesh is designated as a gateway.
The gateways provides connectivity to an external network. In
order to simplify the explanation of the channel assignment
solution, we assume the presence of only one gateway. Access
Points (APs) provide connectivity to user devices and are colocated with mesh routers. A majority of the traffic within
the mesh is either from the user devices to the gateway or
vice-versa. This traffic pattern is typical in wireless mesh
deployments. Because the traffic pattern is skewed to-and-from
the gateway, the paths taken by the resulting flows are likely
to form a tree structure in which the gateway is the root
and the user devices are the leaves. Traffic flows will likely
aggregate at routers close to the gateway. Therefore, in order
to improve overall network capacity, it is preferable to place
MRs close to the gateway and in regions of the mesh that
are likely to experience heavy utilization. It is important that
the placement occur after careful network planning in order to
optimize network performance, reduce equipment costs, and
address logistical constraints.
The dotted lines in the figure illustrate links between MRs
that are tuned to non-overlapping channels. In our example,
five such channels are used. A sixth channel, indicated by
solid lines, is the default channel. The Channel Assignment
Server (CAS), which is co-located with the gateway in the
figure, performs channel assignment to radios.
In assigning channels, the CAS should satisfy the following
goals:

Fig. 2.

Multi-Radio wireless mesh architecture.

Minimize interference between routers in the mesh: In

satisfying this goal, three sub-goals need to be achieved.
First, the CAS should satisfy the constraint that for a link
to exist between two routers, the two end-point radios
on them must be assigned a common channel. Second,
links in direct communication range of each other should
be tuned to non-overlapping channels. Third, because of
the tree shaped traffic pattern expected in wireless mesh
networks, channel assignment priority should be given to
links starting from the gateway and then to links fanning
outwards towards the edge of the network.
Minimize interference between the mesh network and
wireless networks co-located with the mesh: In satisfying
this goal, the CAS should periodically determine the
amount of interference in the mesh due to co-located
wireless networks. The interference level is estimated by
individual mesh routers. The CAS should then re-assign
channels such that the radios operate on channels that
experience the least interference from the external radios.
Given these goals for the channel assignment algorithm,
next we present details on interference estimation and describe
the interference modeling technique.

IV. I NTERFERENCE E STIMATION AND M ODELING

This section presents an overview of the interference estimation procedure. Implementation details are left to Section VI.
This section also introduces the Multi-radio Conflict Graph
(MCG) model.
A. Interference Estimation
The goal of interference estimation is to periodically measure the interference level in each mesh routers environment.
Accurate measurement, however, is challenging and requires
that expensive hardware be used [1].
Instead, as an approximation, we rely on the number of
interfering radios on each channel supported by each router
as an estimation of interference. An interfering radio is defined
as a simultaneously operating radio that is visible to a router

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but external to the mesh. A visible radio is one whose packet(s)

pass Frame Check Sequence (FCS) checks and are therefore
correctly received. We assume that the CAS informs the router
of radios internal to the mesh. The information could consist
of an IP address range or an exhaustive list of all radio MAC
addresses in the mesh.
One caveat to the above estimation procedure is that carriersensing radios, i.e., those radios that are within an estimating
routers carrier sensing range but outside its reception range,
will not be accounted for in the estimation. This is because
packets transmitted by such radios will fail FCS checks
performed by the router. However, carrier-sensing radios may
still interfere with the router. Our interference estimation
technique does not consider such radios for two reasons.
First, recent studies [12], [24] suggest that current IEEE
802.11 MAC implementations are overly conservative in their
carrier sense mechanism and often overestimate the adverse
impact of interfering radios. Therefore, even in the presence
of multiple carrier-sensing radios, the performance degradation
due to carrier-sensing neighbors may not be as severe as
previously understood. Second, even if we were to incorporate
carrier-sensing radios in our interference estimation solution,
it is impossible to determine the presence of such radios
using commodity hardware because of the inability of current
firmware implementations to identify them1 . A recent proposal [22] aims to overcome the firmware limitations by using
specialized hardware2 . Such hardware are likely to be available
in the future. Another proposal aims to discover carrier-sensing
neighbors using pairwise broadcast probing [17]. However,
it has the drawback that the probing procedure can take a
long time to complete. Therefore, utilizing it in our solution
is still not feasible. We are currently investigating strategies to
address its drawback. In the meantime, we assume a solution
exists, and we leverage this assumption in our implementation.
Measurement of only the number of interfering radios, however, is not sufficient because it does not indicate the amount
of traffic generated by the interfering radios. For instance, two
channels could have the same number of interfering radios but
one channel may be heavily utilized by its interfering radios
compared to the other. Therefore, in addition, each mesh router
also estimates the channel bandwidth utilized by the interfering
radios.
The interference estimation procedure is as follows: a mesh
router configures one radio of each supported physical layer

1 Wireless devices, such as ones using the Prism 2/2.5 chipset, sometimes
allow the capture of packets transmitted by carrier-sensing radios that fail the
FCS check. This mechanism at first might suggest a technique to identify
the carrier-sensing radios. However, the utility of this capture mechanism is
limited because the information contained in the garbled packets is by nature
faulty.
2 An approach that avoids specialized hardware assumes that the carriersensing range is k times the reception range [19]. We note that the relationship
is non-deterministic and less likely to be effective in practice because the
carrier-sensing range is dependent on a myriad number of factors such as
transmission power, receiver sensitivity, environmental conditions, and the
presence of obstacles.

type to capture packets3 on each supported channel for a small

duration. The router uses the captured packets to measure
the number of interfering radios and per second channel
utilization. The number of interfering radios is simply the
number of unique MACs external to the mesh. The utilization
on each channel due to the interfering radios is computed from
the captured data frames by taking into account the packet
sizes and the rates at which the packets were sent [13]. The
overhead of the MAC layer is accounted for in our utilization
calculation. We set the duration of the packet capture to three
seconds in our implementation. The three second duration is
large enough to allow for the averaging of the variations in
per second measurements and is small enough to enable the
interference estimation to complete quickly.
Each mesh router then derives two separate channel rankings. The first ranking is according to increasing number
of interfering radios. The second ranking is according to
increasing channel utilization. The mesh router then merges
the rankings by taking the average of the individual ranks.
The resulting ranking is sent to the CAS.
B. Interference Modeling
Conflict graphs are used extensively to model interference
in cellular radio networks [14]. A conflict graph for a mesh
network is defined as follows: consider a graph, G, with nodes
corresponding to routers in the mesh and edges between the
nodes corresponding to the wireless links. A conflict graph,
F , has vertices corresponding to the links in G and has an
edge between two vertices in F if and only if the links in G
denoted by the two vertices in F interfere with each other. As
an example of a conflict graph, Figure 3(a) shows the topology
of a network with four nodes. Each node in the figure is labeled
with its node name and its number of radios. Figure 3(b) shows
the conflict graph.
At a first glance, the problem of assigning channels to
links in a mesh network appears to be a problem of vertex
coloring the conflict graph. However, vertex coloring fails to
assign channels correctly because it does not account for the
constraint that the number of channels (colors) assignable to a
router must be equal to its number of radios. As an example of
why this is the case, let us assume that the four vertices in the
conflict graph shown in Figure 3(b) are each assigned one of
three different channels using a vertex coloring algorithm. This
means that the two radios represented by each vertex in the
conflict graph operate on the frequency assigned to that vertex.
This implies that node C in the illustrated network operates
on three different channels, which is impossible because it is
equipped with only two radios.
The conflict graph does not correctly model routers
equipped with multiple radios. Therefore, we extend the
conflict graph to model multi-radio routers. In the extended
3 Packet capture mode as implemented on currently available IEEE 802.11
radios cannot capture packets from radios, such as cordless phones or Bluetooth devices, that use other physical layer technologies. We note, however,
that the interference foot-print of such devices is likely to be small. Softwaredefined radios are likely to address this limitation in the future.

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A1 : B1

B1

A1

AB

B1 : C1

A1 : C1

C2
AC

BC

D1

CD

(a)

(b)

B1 : C2

A1 : C2

D1 : C1

D1 : C2

(c)

Fig. 3. (a) A simple network topology, G. (b) Corresponding conflict graph,

F . (c) Corresponding multi-radio conflict graph, F
.

model, called the Multi-radio Conflict Graph (MCG), we

represent edges between the mesh radios as vertices instead
of representing edges between the mesh routers as vertices as
in the original conflict graph. To create the MCG, F
, we first
represent each radio in the mesh network as a vertex in G

instead of representing routers by vertices as in G. Therefore,
in the above example, node C is represented by two vertices
in G
corresponding to its two radios instead of just one vertex
in G. The edges in G
are between the mesh radios instead
of the mesh routers as in G. We then represent each edge in
G
using a vertex in F
. The edges between the vertices in
F
are created in the same way the original conflict graph is
created, i.e., two vertices in F
have an edge between each
other if the edges in G
represented by the two vertices in F

interfere with each other. As an example, Figure 3(c) shows
the multi-radio conflict graph of the network shown in Figure
3(a). In the figure, each vertex is labeled using the radios that
make up the vertex. For example, the vertex (A 1 : C 2)
represents the link between the first radio on router A and the
second radio on router C.
When using a vertex coloring algorithm to color the MCG,
we impose an important constraint: on coloring any MCG vertex, all uncolored vertices in the conflict graph that contain any
radio from the just-colored vertex be removed. For example,
after assigning a color to vertex (A 1 : C 2) in Figure
3(c), all vertices containing either A 1 or C 2 should be
removed from the conflict graph. This is required to ensure
that only one channel is assigned to each radio in the mesh
network.

of giving channel assignment priority to links starting from

the gateway and then in decreasing levels of priority to links
fanning outward towards the edge of the network.
Before using the BFS-CA algorithm, the channel assignment
server (CAS) obtains the interference estimates from the mesh
routers. It then chooses a channel for the default radios. The
default channel is chosen such that its use in the mesh network
minimizes interference between the mesh network and colocated wireless networks. The CAS then creates the MCG
for the non-default radios in the mesh. The MCG is created
using the neighbor information sent by each mesh router to
the CAS. After constructing the MCG, the CAS uses the BFSCA algorithm to select channels for the non-default radios.
Once the channels are selected for the mesh radios, the CAS
instructs the routers to configure their radios to the newly
selected channels. To simplify the explanation of the channel
selection procedure in this section, let us assume for now that
the mesh radios are reconfigured at the same time. We address
this assumption in Section VI-D, where we provide details on
the specific protocol used to re-assign channels.
The default channel selection procedure is presented next
followed by a detailed description of the BFS-CA algorithm.
The CAS periodically invokes the channel selection procedure
summarized above to cope with the varying nature of interference in the mesh. This section ends with a discussion of the
period of invocation and its implications.
B. Default Channel Selection
The CAS chooses the default channel using the rank of a
channel, c, for the entire mesh, Rc . Rc is computed as follows:

n
Rank ic
Rc = i=1
n
where n is the number of routers in the mesh and Rankic is
the rank of channel c at router i. The default channel is then
chosen as the channel with the least Rc value. The intuition
behind this metric is to use the least interfered channel as the
default channel in the mesh. Using such a channel satisfies
our goal of minimizing interference between the mesh and
co-located wireless networks.

V. C HANNEL A SSIGNMENT A LGORITHM

A. Overview

C. Non-Default Channel Selection

The channel assignment problem for mesh networks is

similar to the list coloring problem, which is defined as
follows: given a graph, G = (V, E), and for every v in V ,
a list L(v) of colors, is it possible to construct a valid vertex
coloring of G such that every vertex v receives a color from
the list L(v)? The list coloring problem is NP-complete [21].
Therefore, we rely on an approximate algorithm for channel
assignment. Our algorithm, called the Breadth First Search
Channel Assignment (BFS-CA) algorithm, uses a breadth first
search to assign channels to the mesh radios. The search begins
with links emanating from the gateway node. The rationale
behind the use of breadth first search is intuitive: by using
breadth first search, we satisfy our goal described in Section III

In this phase, the CAS uses the neighbor information

collected from all routers to construct the MCG. Neighbor
information sent by a router contains the identity of its
neighbors, delay to each neighbor, and interference estimates
for all channels supported by the routers radios. Section VIC details the calculation of link delay performed by mesh
routers. The CAS associates with each vertex in the MCG its
corresponding link delay value. The CAS also associates with
each vertex a channel ranking derived by taking the average of
the individual channel rankings of the two radios that make up
the vertex. The average is important because the assignment of
a channel to a vertex in the MCG should take into account the
preferences of both end-point radios that make up the vertex.

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Algorithm 1 BFS-CA Algorithm

1: Let V = {v|v MCG}
2: while notAllVerticesVisited{V } do
3: Let h = smallestHopCount(V )
4: Q = {v|v V and notVisited(v) and hopcount(v) == h}
5: sort(Q)
6: while size(Q) > 0 do
7:
vcurrent = removeHead(Q)
8:
if visited(vcurrent ) then
9:
continue
10:
end if
11:
visit(vcurrent )
12:
Vn = {u|u MCG and edgeInMCG(u, vcurrent ) == TRUE}
13:
permanently assign highest ranked channel c from vcurrent s channel ranking that does not conflict with ui , {ui Vn and 0 i <
size(Vn )}
14:
if c does not exist then
15:
permanently assign random channel to vcurrent
16:
end if
17:
L = {v|v MCG and v contains either radio from vcurrent }
18:
removeVerticesInListFromMCG(L)
19:
tentatively assign c to radios in L that are not part of vcurrent
20:
Let rf be router with interface in vcurrent that is farthest away
from gateway
21:
Let T ail = list of all active v (v MCG) such that v contains an
interface from rf
22:
sort(T )
23:
addToQueue(Q, T ail)
24: end while
25: permanently assign channels to radios that are unassigned a permanent
channel.
26: end while

For all vertices in the MCG, the CAS then computes their
distances from the gateway. The distance of an MCG vertex is
the average of the distances from the gateway of the two radios
that make up the vertex. The distance of a radio is obtained
from beacons initiated by the gateway. A beacon is a gateway
advertisement broadcasted hop-by-hop throughout the mesh.
Each beacon contains a hop-count field that is incremented at
each hop during its broadcast. The distance of a router from the
gateway is the shortest path length of a single beacon instance
received by the router over all paths. The router communicates
the distance to the CAS via periodic heartbeat messages sent
every minute in our implementation.
Algorithm: Once the average distances are computed, the
CAS uses the BFS-CA algorithm to assign channels to the
mesh radios. The algorithm is summarized in Algorithm 1.
The algorithm starts by adding all vertices from the MCG
to a list, V (Line 1). It does a breadth first search of the
MCG to visit all vertices and assign them channels. The search
starts from vertices that correspond to links emanating from
the gateway (Lines 3, 4). In line 3, the smallest hopcount
vertex is determined of all vertices in the MCG. In line 4,
all vertices with distance equal to the smallest hop count are
added to a queue, Q. If vertices correspond to network links
emanating from the gateway, their hop count is 0.5. These
vertices are then sorted by increasing delay values (Line 5).
This sort is performed in order to give higher priority to the
better links emanating from the shortest hop count router (the
gateway for the first BFS iteration).
The algorithm then visits each vertex in Q (Line 11) and
permanently assigns them the highest ranked channel that does
not conflict with the channel assignments of its neighbors

(Line 13). If a non-conflicting channel is not available, a randomly chosen channel is permanently assigned to the vertex.
Note, however, that the default channel is never assigned. Once
a vertex is assigned a channel, all vertices that contain either
radio from the just-assigned vertex are placed in a list, L (Line
17). In line 18, all vertices from L are removed from the
MCG. This step is needed to satisfy the constraint that only
one channel is assigned to each radio. The radios in the list
of vertices that do not belong to the just-assigned vertex are
tentatively assigned the latters channel (Line 19).
In lines 20-21, vertices at the next level of the breadth first
search are added to Q. These vertices correspond to links
that fan-out from the gateway towards the periphery. To find
such links in the MCG, two steps are performed. In the first
step (Line 20), the router from the just-assigned vertex that is
farthest away from the gateway is chosen; the farthest router
is the router with the higher hop-count of the two routers that
make up the just-assigned vertex. In the second step (Line
20), all unvisited MCG vertices that contain a radio belonging
to the farthest router are added to the list, T ail. This list
is sorted (Line 22) by increasing value of the delay metric
to give higher priority to better links that emanate from the
farthest router. Finally, in line 23, the vertices from T ail are
added to Q. The above described algorithm continues until all
vertices in the MCG are visited. In line 25, any radio that is
not assigned a permanent channel during the search, because
vertices containing it were deleted in line 18, is permanently
assigned one of the channels tentatively assigned to it in line
19.
Once channel assignments are decided, the CAS notifies the
mesh routers to re-assign their radios to the chosen channels.
The exact protocol is described in Section VI-D.
D. Channel Re-assignment Strategy
To adapt to the changing interference characteristics, the
CAS periodically re-assigns channels. The periodicity depends
ultimately on how frequently interference levels in the mesh
network are expected to change. If a large number of interfering devices in the vicinity of the mesh network are expected
to be short-lived, the invocation rate should be increased. On
the other hand, if a majority of the interfering devices are
likely to be long-lived, the invocation rate can be decreased.
In our implementation, we have set the rate to ten minutes. We
believe this rate results in a good tradeoff between interference
adaptation and mesh radio reconfiguration. Nevertheless, we
expect the network operator of a mesh network to choose a
rate to best suit the target deployment.
VI. I MPLEMENTATION C ONSIDERATIONS
In the earlier sections, we omitted details on several implementation specific steps, such as the channel estimation
procedure, link delay estimation, and the channel assignment
process. This section describes the implementation aspects of
these steps as they become critical when BFS-CA is used in
practice.

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A. Interference Estimation
Each mesh router performs interference estimation by capturing packets from the medium. To capture packets, we use a
special operating mode supported by typical radio hardware
called the RFMon mode. This mode allows IEEE 802.11
management frames and regular data frames in the medium to
be captured. The management frames are periodically transmitted (typically every 100 msec) by devices that implement
the IEEE 802.11 specification. We do not use the typical
promiscuous mode supported by the radios because that mode
only sniffs data frames and does not sniff IEEE management
frames. Consequently, devices that do not transmit any data
packets during the capture period will not be discovered.
The RFMon mode provides information about each packet,
such as the rate at which it was sent and the size of the
packet. It derives this information by interpreting physical
layer information associated with the packet and therefore can
provide the information even if layer 2 encryption is used to
conceal the contents of the packets. The captured packets are
then used to measure the number of interfering radios and the
bandwidth consumed by those radios.
Radios, when placed in RFMon mode, cannot transmit data
packets for the duration of the sniffing. This is because some
commercial radios, such as those utilizing the Prism 2/2.5
chipset, cannot perform packet transmission in RFMon mode.
Even if radios can transmit in RFMon mode, such as ones utilizing the Atheros chipset, because the interference estimation
at each router occurs independently of its neighbors, there is
no guarantee that two radios will be on the same channel in
order to communicate successfully. Therefore, any flow that
uses a radio temporarily in RFMon mode will be disrupted.
To prevent flow disruption, we use link redirection, described
next.

B. Link Redirection
Link redirection is achieved when a flow intended for a
routers non-default radio is redirected to the routers default
radio instead. Link redirection is invoked in two cases: (1)
when a routers intended transmitter is incapable of delivering
packets, and (2) when the intended receiver on the neighboring
router is incapable of receiving packets. Redirection is possible
because the default radios on all routers operate on the default
channel.
Our link redirection protocol is as follows: whenever a
radio has to change its state to inactive, it broadcasts an
INTERFACE-INACTIVE message every second for three seconds before it changes state. The multiple broadcasts allow for any message losses. Any neighbor that receives the
INTERFACE-INACTIVE message deletes the address of the
soon-to-become inactive radio from its routing tables. Once
the deletion occurs, link redirection is invoked until the radio
becomes active again. We simply rely on the routing protocol
to notify that a radio has become active.

C. Link Delay Estimation

We measure link delay using the Expected Transmission
Time (ET T ) metric [9]. ETT of a link is derived from the
links bandwidth and loss rate. Due to space constraints, we
specify below only the values of various parameters used to
calculate ET T . A more detailed description of the metric can
be found in [9]. ETT of a link is given as (etx s/b) where etx
is the expected number of transmissions necessary to send a
packet on the link; s is the size of the packet (set to 1024 bytes
in our implementation); and b is the bandwidth of the link.
For the etx metric, we set the broadcast probe size to 1024
bytes and probe rate to one second. etx is calculated every
10 seconds. The link data rate, b, is determined using packet
pair probing [15]. The packet pair is of size 134 bytes and
1200 bytes respectively and is sent every minute. We choose
the minimum of ten samples to estimate b.
D. Channel Assignment Protocol
Channel assignment is different for non-default radios and
default radios. Assignment of non-default radios can happen
without flow disruption by invoking link redirection. To perform the assignment, the CAS simply sends a message to the
router whose radios need to be reconfigured. The CAS waits
for a positive acknowledgment from the router for a small time
interval (5 seconds in our implementation). If the router fails
to acknowledge the message, the CAS sends the message up-to
five times in our implementation. As soon as a router receives
the channel assignment message, it invokes link redirection
by following the protocol described in Section VI-B. It then
initiates configuration of its radios. After the assignment
completes and the neighboring radio on the link is confirmed
to be active, redirection stops. In our implementation, we use
the ping utility to confirm that the link is active.
In order to assign the default radio channel, we assume the
availability of a reliable broadcast protocol [18] that can be
utilized to notify all mesh routers about the new assignment.
However, during configuration of the default radio, there is
no guarantee that existing flows will not be disrupted. If flows
can reach a destination entirely using non-default radios, those
flows will not be disrupted. Flows that must use the default
radio channel, on the other hand, will be disrupted until the
configuration completes. However, we expect the assignment
of the default radio channel to occur less frequently than
for the non-default radios. This is because the interference
level of the currently used default channel has to increase
throughout the large deployment area of the mesh network
for the average interference metric presented in Section V-B
to increase enough to require re-assignment.
VII. S IMULATIONS
The objective of the simulation-based evaluation is to understand the behavior of our BFS-CA algorithm and protocol in
large-scale networks. We consider four large-scale topologies.
We vary the traffic patterns and the amount of external interference in three different network scenarios. In our evaluations,
we compare BFS-CA against a static channel assignment.

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In this section, we first describe the simulation environment.

We then present the four network topologies followed by a
description of the three scenarios used in our evaluations. We
end this section by presenting the results.
A. Simulation Environment
We use Qualnet for our simulations. We utilize the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol [8] for routing within the mesh network and the Weighted Cumulative
Expected Transmission Time (WCETT) metric [9] for route
selection. OLSR uses an optimized flooding mechanism to
flood link state information in the network. WCETT is a
routing metric designed for multi-radio, multi-hop wireless
networks. The metric computes an estimate of the time taken to
transmit a packet on a path based on the estimated bandwidth
and reliability of individual links on the path and the frequency
diversification of the path.
WCETT relies on the ETT metric introduced in Section VI
to measure the expected delay on a path. To support the ETT
metric, we implemented packet pair probing and broadcast
flooding as described in Section VI-C. in the WCETT metric
can be changed to vary the weight given to the path delay
and frequency diversification parameters in the metric. We set
to 0.5 which results in a good tradeoff between the two
parameters during path selection [9].
OLSR link state information disseminated in the mesh is
overloaded to contain link delay (ETT) values and the channel
numbers on which links operate. We also modified OLSR to
use source routing because it simplifies WCETT support in
OLSR. We set the TC REDUNDANCY protocol parameter in
OLSR in order to increase the number of paths available in
the mesh network.
In order to support the RFMon mode in our simulations,
a radio in sniffing mode is prevented from transmitting any
packets. We also simulate the layer 2 beaconing of IEEE
management frames through the implementation of a beaconing module that transmits a management frame every 100
milliseconds. All radios are IEEE 802.11a radios, support 12
channels, and use auto-rate fallback. The two-ray propagation
model is used with Rayleigh fading. The transmission power
for the 802.11a rates is set to 18 dBm. RTS/CTS is disabled.
To make our simulations as accurate as possible, we implement interference estimation, link redirection, and the channel
assignment protocol as described in Section VI. Interface
estimation occurs every 5 minutes. The time spent estimating
interference on each channel is set to 3 seconds. Therefore,
the total time spent by a radio in RFMon mode is equal
to 36 seconds (12 times 3). The CAS invokes the BFS-CA
algorithm every 10 minutes. All nodes in our simulation are
synchronized in time although this is not required for BFS-CA
to operate correctly.
Before describing the results from our set of simulations,
we first describe results from a simple topology to validate the
correct operation of our algorithm. The topology is a linear
topology consisting of four nodes. Node 1 is equipped with
one radio, nodes 2 and 4 with two radios, and node 3 with three

radios. Node 1 sends an 8 Mbps CBR traffic stream consisting

of 1024 byte packets to node 4 that starts at 30 seconds and
continues until the end of the test at 1760 seconds. Node 4 is
designated as the CAS.
At the start of the simulation, all the default radios are
configured to operate on a common channel. However, the
non-default radios are each configured to operate on different
channels. Therefore, the only path from node 1 to the gateway
at the start of the simulation is on the default mesh. The first
channel assignment occurs at 600 s. Just before 900 s, a lower
bit rate stream is started between two interfering nodes. The
interfering nodes are co-located with nodes 3 and 4 and operate
on the same channel as used by the link between 3 and 4.
Figure 4 shows the throughput activity at the destination in
terms of number of packets received per second.
Before 600 s, node 4 receives just more than 200 packets
per second from node 1. However, at 600 s, the CAS assigns
the radios at nodes 2, 3, and 4 to non-overlapping channels.
Consequently, the number of packets received at node 4
increased to about 1000 packets per second. At the time
indicated by S in the figure, the non-default radios perform
interference estimation. Therefore, the number of packets
received at node 4 at the indicated times drops from about
1000 packets per second to a little more than 200 packets per
second. Note that the number of packets delivered per second
never drops to zero. This is because the nodes implement link
redirection as described in Section VI-B. Just before 900 s, the
interfering stream is introduced. Consequently, the number of
packets received at node 4 decreases. The non-default radios
at nodes 3 and 4 detect the interference at 1018 s and send
their interference estimates to the CAS. At 1200 s, the CAS
re-assigns the channel of the link. The figure illustrates the
resulting improvement in throughput.
B. Network Topologies
We now describe the four topologies used in our large-scale
evaluation. Each topology consists of 30 routers distributed in
a terrain of 500x500 meters. Our choices for the number of
routers and the terrain size are typical in large-scale, real-world
deployments [5]. In topologies 1 and 2, the physical terrain is
divided into a number of cells. Within each cell, a router is
placed randomly. In generating the two topologies, we used
different seed values. The two topologies reflect real-world
deployments where mesh routers are uniformly distributed for
maximum coverage. Topology 3 is a grid topology where the
inter-router spacing is 75 meters. We consider a grid topology
in order to evaluate BFS-CA in a densely populated topology.
For topology 4, we choose a randomly generated topology to
evaluate BFS-CA performance in an unplanned deployment of
routers.
The router approximately in the center of each topology is
designated as the gateway. The number of radios per router
is chosen such that routers close to the gateway are equipped
with more radios than ones farther away. The gateway node
is equipped with four radios. Three routers, chosen from the
routers one hop away from the gateway, are each also equipped

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1200

Packets Received

1000
800
600
Data
400
200
0
0

A
300

Interference
S
A
600
900 1200 1500 1760
Time (seconds)

Fig. 4. CBR Throughput in a four node network. S indicates periodic

interference estimation by the non-default radios at each node. A indicates
channel assignment by the CAS.

with four radios. Six routers, chosen from the routers two hops
away from the gateway, are each equipped with three radios.
Six more routers at three hops from the gateway are equipped
with two radios. Remaining routers are single-radio routers.
The selection of multi-radio routers is done manually in order
to comply with the router placement strategy discussed in
Section III.
C. Network Scenarios
We consider three network scenarios in our evaluation. In
the first scenario, we evaluate the throughput improvement
obtained by utilizing multi-radio routers instead of singleradio routers. Ten randomly chosen routers at the periphery
send data in two minute FTP transfers to the gateway. The
scenario lasts for forty minutes. Therefore, multiple channel
assignments occur in the network. This scenario is designed
to be an ideal scenario in which: (1) there is no inter-flow
interference in the network; and (2) there is no interference
from external networks. To satisfy the first requirement, each
source begins transmission 30 seconds after the previous
one has stopped; the first source starts 620 seconds into the
simulation to allow for the first channel assignment to occur.
To satisfy the second requirement, we do not co-locate any
external nodes.
For scenario 2, we again consider a network setting in
which there there is no external interference. However, unlike
scenario 1, we let multiple flows within the mesh interfere with
each other. The traffic is generated by the same set of sources
as chosen in the first scenario. Furthermore, the sources start
at the same times as in scenario 1. However, they do not stop
transmitting until the end of the simulation (forty minutes).
For scenario 3, we consider a general network setting in
which there is inter-flow interference as well as interference
from external networks. To create this scenario, we take
scenario 2 and introduce interfering nodes in multiples of 4 up
to a total of 28 interfering nodes in each of the four topologies.
The nodes are organized into sender-receiver pairs. Each pair is
randomly distributed in the terrain space. A sender from each
pair transmits a 8 Mbps CBR stream consisting of 1024 byte
packets in 10 minute bursts to the receiver in the pair. The
interval between each burst is 50 seconds. The nodes start

transmitting at 630 s. For each 10 minute burst, the node pairs

randomly select a channel for communication.
In the scenarios presented above, BFS-CA is compared
against a static assignment of channels. In the static case,
called the Static Multi-Radio scheme, the default radios
operate on one channel. The first non-default radio on all
multi-radio routers is tuned to a non-overlapping channel. Of
the remaining routers that still have unassigned radios, the
second non-default radio is tuned to a second non-overlapping
channel. Finally, the gateway and the multi-radio routers
closest to the gateway tune their third non-default radio to
a third non-overlapping channel.
D. Results
In scenario 1, we evaluate the throughput improvement
gained by utilizing multi-radio routers instead of single-radio
routers for each of the network topologies. Figure 5(a) plots
the mean throughput of the ten FTP transfers in a single-radio
mesh network, in a multi-radio mesh network with BFS-CA,
and in a multi-radio mesh network with static assignment.
The throughput improvement with multiple radios is greater
than 200% for topology 1 and greater than 100% for topologies 2 and 3. The throughput improvement for topology 4,
however, is only about 33% with the BFS-CA scheme and
approximately 54% with the static multi-radio scheme. In
topology 4, the multi-radio routers are less likely to be on
paths to the gateway because they are randomly distributed in
the terrain space.
More notably, Figure 5(a) indicates that in topologies 2, 3, and 4, the static multi-radio scheme performs better
than BFS-CA by about 8%, 5%, and 15% respectively. This
is because BFS-CA improves throughput by tuning individual
links to non-overlapping frequencies. Because of this strategy,
the opportunity to find channel-diversified paths is less than
with the static scheme where regions of the mesh network
are tuned to non-overlapping frequencies. Therefore, with the
static scheme, the opportunity to choose channel-diversified
paths is better. As a result, the static scheme performs better.
In order to verify the above reasoning, we computed the
Channel Diversity Extent (CDE) of all flows with the two
schemes. The CDE of a flow is obtained by taking the average
of the CDEs of all paths traversed for the flow; a flow can
traverse multiple paths because of variations in a links ETT
value, which can result in path changes. The CDE of a path
is defined as the ratio of the number of channels used in the
path to its hop-count. For example, if a 4 hop path makes use
of 4 channels, its CDE is 1. On the other hand, if the path
makes use of only 1 channel, its CDE is 0.25. A path with a
high CDE is generally preferred over a path with a low CDE.
A TCP flow is bi-directional due to acknowledgments and is
considered as two flows in our calculations.
Figure 5(b) is a scatter plot of the CDEs of all flows for
the two multi-radio schemes. The x value of each point in the
plot is the CDE of a path with BFS-CA, and the y value is
the CDE of the same path with the static scheme. The line
x = y indicates paths with equal CDE values. A majority of

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1000

500

2
3
Topology

Avg Hop Count

1500

1
MultiRadio Static

Mean Throughput (Kbps)

Single Radio
BFSCA
Static MultiRadio

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.2

(a) Mean Throughput

3
2
1
0

0.4

0.6
BFSCA

0.8

BFSCA
Static MultiRadio

(b) Scatter plot of CDE

2
3
Topology

(c) Average hop-count

Fig. 5. Results from scenario 1 where the BFS-CA and static schemes are compared against a single-radio scheme. Scenario 1 has no inter-flow interference
and no external interference.

400
200

Topology

(a) Mean throughput

BFSCA
Avg Hop Count

600

0
0

BFSCA
Static MultiRadio

Static MultiRadio

Mean Throughput (Kbps)

800

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.2

Static MultiRadio

3
2
1

0.4

0.6
BFSCA

0.8

(b) Scatter plot of CDE

2
3
Topology

(c) Average hop-count

Fig. 6. Results from scenario 2 where BFS-CA is compared against the static scheme in the presence of inter-flow interference but without external
interference.

the points in the plot are above the x = y line. These points
indicate paths that with the static scheme have higher CDE
values than with the BFS-CA scheme. Consequently, paths
with the static scheme are more channel diversified than with
the BFS-CA scheme.
Figure 5(c) is a plot of the average hop-counts for the two
multi-radio schemes in scenario 1 for the four topologies. The
hop-count with BFS-CA is higher than with the static scheme.
This is because WCETT, the routing metric in our evaluations,
prefers a frequency diversified path over alternatives that may
be shorter. Because of the assignment strategies of the two
schemes, WCETT picks longer frequency diversified paths
with BFS-CA than with the static scheme.
The above noted performance improvement of the static
scheme over BFS-CA is achieved only in an ideal scenario
where sources send traffic to the gateway one at a time.
Because of the assignment strategy in the static scheme, when
multiple sources transmit, flows to the gateway each traverse
links tuned to the same channels, resulting in increased interference between the flows. Consequently, the throughput
improvement with the static scheme is expected to be less
than with the BFS-CA scheme.
This intuition is verified in scenario 2 wherein multiple
sources transmit to the gateway at the same time. Figure 6(a)
plots the mean throughput obtained with the two multi-radio
schemes. Clearly, BFS-CA outperforms the static scheme.
Specifically, the throughput improvement is as high as 72%
with topology 2 and 48%, 60%, and 13% with topolo-

gies 1, 3, and 4, respectively. Figure 6(b) shows the CDEs

of the flows for the two schemes. Points lie in approximately
equal numbers above and below the x = y line. Although
the flows in the two schemes are equally channel diversified,
the throughput with BFS-CA is higher because of reduced
inter-flow interference. Figure 6(c) plots the average hop-count
with the two schemes. The average hop-count with BFS-CA
is slightly higher than with the static scheme. This is because
of the assignment strategy used by BFS-CA. However, with
BFS-CA, the flows traverse paths that result in less inter-flow
interference than with the static scheme. Therefore, the mean
throughput with BFS-CA is greater.
In the third scenario, we consider the effect of varying
amounts of interference on the performance of the mesh
topologies for the two multi-radio schemes. Figure 7 shows
the percentage difference in the mean throughput of the ten
FTP transfers achieved by the two schemes. In a majority
of the cases, BFS-CA outperforms the static scheme. As
an average of the performance differences with varying the
number of interfering radios, BFS-CA performs better than
the static scheme by 42.14%, 31.14%, 15.75%, and 11.85%
for topologies 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively. BFS-CAs improved
performance over the static scheme occurs because the mesh
routers in the network topologies are able to detect the increased interference and are therefore re-assigned by the CAS
to channels different than ones used by the interfering nodes.
In the case of topology 4, the unplanned distribution of mesh
routers in the terrain space results in BFS-CA performing only

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BFSCA

Percentage Improvement

100

100 BFSCA
BFSCA

50

50

50

Static MultiRadio

100

50

Static MultiRadio

100
4

100

8 12 16 20 24 28
Interfering Radios
(a) Topology 1

BFSCA

50

8 12 16 20 24 28
Interfering Radios
(b) Topology 2

100

BFSCA

50

50

50

Static MultiRadio

100

Static MultiRadio
100

8 12 16 20 24 28
Interfering Radios
(c) Topology 3

8 12 16 20 24 28
Interfering Radios
(d) Topology 4

Fig. 7. Percentage improvement in throughput with BFS-CA relative to Static

Multi-Radio in the presence of interference. The number of interfering radios
is shown on the x-axes.

slightly better than the static scheme. More noteworthy is BFSCAs performance in topology 3 (the grid topology) in which
the throughput gains with BFS-CA is only marginally better
than the topology 4 case. This is because in topology 3, the
mesh routers and interfering networks are densely populated in
the terrain space. Consequently, the interference foot-print of
the interfering networks is greater in the dense environment.
As a result, re-assignment of channels yields only minimal
throughput improvement with BFS-CA.
VIII. P ROTOTYPE I MPLEMENTATION
Our primary motivation in implementing a prototype is to
demonstrate the practicality of our proposed BFS-CA algorithm and protocol. We evaluate the implementation in a six
node IEEE 802.11b testbed with the Linux 2.4.26 operating
system.
The prototype implementation consists of a router module
and a CAS module. The router module is installed on each
mesh router and implements the interference estimation and
link redirection procedures as described in Section VI. To
perform RFMon sniffing, it invokes Linux utilities such as
the iwconfig wireless utilities and the tethereal packet capture
tool. The CAS module implements the BFS-CA algorithm.
Interference estimation occurs every 5 minutes, and the channel selection procedure is invoked every 10 minutes as in the
simulations.
Because IEEE 802.11b supports only three non-overlapping
channels (1, 6, and 11), the performance improvement obtained using the proposed solution in our testbed setting is
expected to be limited. We considered using Atheros based
IEEE 802.11a radios. However, our testbed nodes use Linux
and ad-hoc mode support in Linux drivers for IEEE 802.11a
radios is currently faulty [3].

All nodes in the topology are IBM R32 Thinkpad laptops.

The six nodes are each equipped with one Netgate NL2511CD PCMCIA radio. Nodes B and C are each equipped
with an additional Linksys WUSB12 USB radio. We use USB
extender cables for the Linksys radios. Nodes A, B, C, and D
form a static multi-hop wireless network in a simple line
topology, i.e., A cannot see C and D, B cannot see D, and
vice-versa. Nodes E and F are interfering nodes positioned
roughly a meter away from B and C respectively. Nodes E
and F use a different ESSID and network IP address than A,
B, C, and D. All radios are configured to operate at 11 Mbps.
RTS/CTS is disabled.
For the entire duration of the experiment, the default mesh
is set to channel 1. We did not allow the re-assignment of
the default mesh channel during our experiments because our
WUSB12 radios do not support dynamic reconfiguration in
ad-hoc mode. Node B is designated as the CAS. The CAS
informs nodes A, C, and D about the IP address range that
belongs to the mesh network. At the start of the experiment,
the radios on E and F and the non-default radios on B and C
are tuned to channel 6.
In the experiment, A sends 1024 byte UDP packets as fast as
possible to saturate the path to D for a duration of 40 minutes.
The interfering node E sends 1024 byte UDP packets as fast as
possible to saturate the link to node F starting at 250 s until
the end of the experiment. At 1400 s, we manually switch
nodes E and F from channel 6 to channel 11 in order to
measure the response of our algorithm implementation to a
varying interference.
Figure 8 illustrates the throughput in terms of number of
packets received at D and F. From the figure, it can be clearly
seen that the throughput of the stream from A to D is not
affected by the interfering stream. This is because the links AB and C-D are in interfering range of each other; they are
in interfering range because of the dearth in non-overlapping
channels with IEEE 802.11b. Consequently, these links form
the bottleneck. As a result, link B-C is able to consistently
sustain the low number of packets injected by A in spite
of interference from link E-F. The drop in throughput every
300 seconds is because of the periodic interference estimation
performed by the non-default radio on B and C. The estimation
occurs for 9 seconds (3 seconds times 3 non-overlapping
channels). The throughput never drops to zero because link
redirection is performed over the default radios until the
interference estimation completes. At the times indicated by
S in the figure, the non-default radios at B and C detect the
interference and notify the CAS. At the times indicated by
A, the non-default radios are re-assigned to a channel not
used by the interfering stream. The result of the re-assignment
can be clearly seen in the throughput plot of the interfering
network. After the first re-assignment, the link B-C switches
from Channel 6 to 11. Consequently, the throughput of the
interfering stream increases. At 1400 s, link E-F is manually
assigned to channel 11. As a result, the throughput drops. It
increases again when link B-C switches from Channel 11 back
to Channel 6 due to the second re-assignment.

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Packets Received

Interfering Stream
600
400
Mesh Stream
200

R EFERENCES
S

Fig. 8.

find that BFS-CA results in significant performance improvements in the presence of varying interference levels, which
are validated through empirical measurements on a testbed.
As future work, we plan to evaluate BFS-CA on the UCSB
MeshNet [6], a thirty node multi-radio wireless mesh testbed
at UCSB.

500

1000
1500
Time (seconds)

2000

Throughput in the presence of an interfering stream.

IX. R ELATED W ORK

There exists a large number of studies that aim to address
the capacity problem in wireless mesh networks. We summarize a representative sample below.
Several proposals focus on improving the IEEE 802.11
MAC protocol to support multiple channels [7], [11], [23].
The key advantage of such schemes is that only a single radio
is required to support multiple channels. The disadvantage,
however, is that they require changes to the MAC layer and the
hardware in order to support per-packet channel switching. To
the best of our knowledge, such hardware is still not available.
Raniwala et al. [19], [20] propose a load-aware algorithm to
dynamically assign channels in a multi-radio mesh network.
Raniwalas proposal requires that anticipated traffic loads and
paths traversed by flows be known before channel assignment
takes place. The key distinguishing aspect in our proposal
is that we assign channels based entirely on knowledge of
interference in the mesh network. Kyasanur et al. propose a
hybrid channel assignment solution for multi-radio wireless
ad hoc networks [16]. In this scheme, a subset of radios
on a router are statically assigned channels. The remaining
radios dynamically switch to the static channels assigned to
neighboring routers in order to communicate with them. The
scheme requires that radios can switch between channels on
a per-packet basis. To the best of our knowledge, such radios
are not available in the marketplace.
Some mesh hardware vendors [2], [4] offer multi-radio
mesh routers that utilize proprietary channel assignment
schemes. Therefore, we are unable to provide a fair comparison.

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X. C ONCLUSIONS
Multi-radio routers can significantly improve the performance of wireless mesh networks. However, any static assignment of channels to the mesh radios can degrade network performance because of interference from co-located wireless networks. This paper presented BFS-CA, a dynamic, interferenceaware channel assignment algorithm and corresponding protocol for multi-radio wireless mesh networks. BFS-CA improves
the performance of wireless mesh networks by minimizing
interference between routers in the mesh network and between
the mesh network and co-located wireless networks. The
proposed solution is practical and easily implementable. We

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This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the Proceedings IEEE Infocom.