Optimized Load Balancing for Wireless Mesh

Many wireless networks have been evolved to provide a better services, among them wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a potential technology that attracted increasing attention and deployment as a high-performance and low cost solution to last-mile broadband Internet access. WMNs consist of mesh routers and mesh clients. Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a promising wireless technology for several emerging and commercially interesting applications, e.g., broadband home networking, community and neighborhood networks, coordinated network management, intelligent transportation systems. It is gaining significant attention as a possible way for Internet service providers (ISPs) and other end users to establish robust and reliable wireless broadband service access at a reasonable cost. WMNs can be thinking of as a layered architecture in which the upper layer consists of wireless mesh networks of mesh routers forming a backbone network which forward the traffics from mobile clients to the Internet. The presence of backbone mesh routers and implementation of multiple channels and interfaces make the WMNs to have better capacity than that of infrastructure-free ad-hoc network formed by mesh clients directly. Compared to traditional wireless networks, WMN is dynamically self-organized and self-

configured i.e. the nodes in the mesh network automatically establish and maintain network connectivity. This feature brings many advantages for the end-users, such as low up-front cost, easy network maintenance, robustness, and reliable service coverage. In addition, with the use of advanced radio technologies, e.g., multiple radio interfaces and smart antennas, network capacity in WMNs is increased significantly. Moreover, the gateway and bridge functionalities in mesh routers enable the integration of wireless mesh networks with various existing wireless networks, such as wireless sensor networks, wireless-fidelity (Wi-Fi), and WiMAX. Consequently, through an integrated wireless mesh network, the end-users can take the advantage of multiple wireless networks.