Towards QoS Provisioning in a Heterogeneous Carrier-Grade Wireless Mesh Access Networks Using Unidirectional Overlay Cells

Abstract

Abstract. The visibility and success of Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) deployments has raised interest among commercial operators in this technology. Compared to traditional operator access networks WMNs have the potential to offer easier deployment and flexible self-reconfiguration at lower costs. A WMN-type architecture considered as an alternative for an operator access network must meet similar requirements such as high availability and guaranteed QoS in order to support triple-play content provisioning. In this paper we introduce an architecture of such a Carrier-grade Wireless Mesh Access Network (CG-WMAN). We then present our contribution, an approach to seamlessly integrate unidirectional broadcast cells (i.e. DVB-T) into such a CG-WMAN. This allows higher layer protocols to utilize broadcast cells like regular mesh links, where beneficial for a given payload and receiver distribution. We then present a typical use case and discuss for which combinations of traffic type, user distribution and QoS requirements the use of longer range broadcast technologies can help to improve the overall CG-WMAN performance in terms of throughput and reliability.

An IEEE 802.21-based Approach to Integrate Unidirectional Wireless Technologies into QoS-constrained

“…In order to more efficiently utilize longer range broadcast cells, the CG-WMAN routing algorithm is extended to address the trade-off between in-mesh forwarding of traffic versus the use of longer range broadcast cells, see [12]. This becomes especially important for the distribution of multicast traffic with a larger number of receivers.…”