Performance analysis of Mesh Access Points placement schemes using rural settlement patterns

Internet connectivity in most rural African areas has been viewed as a major challenge due to lack of reliable power, scarcity of network expertise and expensive installation of network equipment. With the rapid development of wireless technologies, Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) has emerged as a promising networking infrastructure, bridging the digital divide between the urban and rural areas. However, during the deployment of a WMN, the placement of Mesh Access Points (MAPs) is an important design issue which drastically influences the network performance. The MAPs placement problem has been investigated and various placement methods have been proposed. However, the effectiveness of the existing MAPs placement schemes have not been evaluated and compared in Rural Settlement Patterns. Hence, this paper analyses the performance of different MAPs placement schemes in four rural settlement patterns: dispersed, nucleated, isolated and linear settlement pattern. The simulation result shows that the Hill Climbing placement scheme in the dispersed and nucleated settlement patterns outperformed other schemes in the achieved throughput, packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay. While Virtual force placement scheme in the linear settlement pattern outperformed others and Time-efficient Local Search outperforms other schemes in the isolated settlement pattern.