Autonomic Formation of Large-Scale Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

Real-world deployments of low-cost, peer-to-peer Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) for communication in under-served settings are hampered by low throughput capacity and high complexity of network control. We present a design of autonomic agents that manipulate the formation of WMN topologies by organizing a node placement into dynamic network partitions while enforcing inter-partition connectivity to promote the WMNs' capacity through density control, increased frequency diversity and multi-domain SDN-based control. We show that our competing Self-Organizing and Self-Healing agents achieve fast convergence to stable partition sets and global re-connectivity, relying on local information. Moreover, the design achieves global inter-partition connectivity with less than 20% of healing agents on nodes, converging under extreme node churn conditions. The design is robust to the average node placement density, producing partitions isolated at the physical and link layers with the properties of bounded diameter and node degree, and elected partition control node to act as an SDN domain controller.