Link Estimation Methods for Routing over FWA Mesh Network

Abstract

With the popularity of mobile communication, the importance of backbone network of the mobile networks, i.e. mobile backhaul networks, has increased significantly. With the decreasing size of mobile network system cells, it is considered next-generation mobile backhaul networks will be mesh-based. To reduce the operating expenses, i.e. OPEX, of the network, mobile network carriers are beginning to shift their circuit-switched networks to packet-switched networks. Most mobile backhaul networks are formed with microwave radios. To increase data rate, Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) is used for wireless links. As a result, the data rate of each wireless link changes over time and thus leads to unexpected packet loss or traffic degradation. This paper proposes a routing scheme and methods for estimating the transmission parameters or modes of wireless links to route bandwidth guaranteed flows over mobile backhaul networks. With estimation methods, degradation of existing flows caused by unexpected changes in the data rate of wireless links can be reduced. This paper shows using mode history of link to estimate the link quality can route bandwidth guaranteed flows efficiently by choosing more stable links for the path. We also show that link estimation methods are effective when mode distribution follows normal, uniform and Poisson distributions.