| dc.description.abstract | Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are wireless multi-hop networks built on
wireless nodes that operate in an Independent Basic Set Identifier (IBSS) mode
of the IEEE 208.11 wireless standard. IBSS is well known as an ad hoc mode
which is found to build ad hoc wireless networks with the aid of routing
protocols crafted to work in this mode. Ad hoc wireless mesh networks are
always described as self-healing, self-configuring, easy to build, etc. However,
these features do come at a cost because a WMN suffers performance
degradation and scalability issues, which mainly come from the underlying
IBSS mode that is used to form the physical network. Furthermore this is
exacerbated by routing protocols in the upper layers which are intended to
form a flat network architecture. Partitioning or clustering the flat network
into smaller units has been proven to be a viable mechanism to counter the
scalability problem in the communication network. The wired network for
instance, presents a segmented, hierarchical architecture, where end user
devices are organized in virtual local area networks (VLANs) using Ethernet
switches and then Routers aggregate multiple VLANs. This thesis develops
and evaluates a heterogeneous, clustering architecture to enhance WMN
scalability and management. In the proposed architecture, the clustering is
separated from the routing, where the clustering is done at the physical layer.
At the routing level, each cluster is configured as a WMN using layer 2 routing
for intra-cluster routing, and layer 3 routing for inter-domain routing between
clusters. Prototypes for the proposed architecture have been built in a
laboratory testbed. The proposed architecture reported better scalability and
performance results compared to the traditional flat architecture. | |
