JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2, JUNE 2012 12

Deploying and configuring wireless mesh network in coexistence of highly interfering wireless LANs
Lamia Romdhani and Amr Mohamed
Computer Science and Engineering Department, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

Abstract: In wireless mesh network, environmental conditions and location of nodes on the network are largely unpredictable and in a constant
state of change. Heterogeneous signal propagation patterns in addition to interference from existing infrastructure pose significant challenges for a wireless mesh network design. In this paper, we explore, by experiments, link performance results produced at Qatar University (QU) wireless mesh test-bed in the coexistence of high interfering wireless transmission. We first perform signal strength measurements for path loss, shadowing, and fading at 2.4/5 GHz frequencies. Then, we investigate the effect of unique cell structure, and heavy lab machinery of the engineering building on the link performance. Furthermore, we study different wireless mesh node configurations and equipments effect on performance and network connectivity. The causes behind link instability and performance shortcoming of the QU wireless mesh network (QUMESH) are identified. Our analysis reveals that the link performance degradation is caused by high interference with wireless LANs, and special QU College of engineering structure. Our work provides insights to network designers to realize high-performance wireless networks by considering the adequate configuration, equipments, and addressing the adaptive transmission approaches.

Index terms: Testbed, Wireless Mesh Networks, Real Experimentation, Harsh Environment, Wi-Fi Interference

1. INTRODUCTION

ireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) consist of mesh routers

and mesh client nodes. A mesh network testbed allows us to study how real applications perform in such networks. Besides to routing capability for gateway/repeater functions as in a conventional router, a mesh router contains additional routing functions to support mesh networking. To further improve the flexibility of mesh networking, a mesh router is usually equipped with multiple wireless interfaces built on either the same or different wireless access technologies. Compared to traditional wireless access point, a wireless mesh network can achieve the same coverage with much lower transmission power per mesh node through multihop communication. Optionally, the medium access control protocol in a mesh router is enhanced for better scalability in a multi-hop mesh environment. A mesh network testbed is critical to identifying fundamental technical problems in the mesh networking technology and validating potential solutions, as it is not possible to accurately capture the behavior of the entire network in theory or in simulators. For example, an accurate interference characterization is a prerequisite and key to designing high performance scheduling, routing, and rate control schemes. However, it is generally difficult to model wireless signal propagation and interference accurately for a given deployment of mesh network, which can potentially change constantly due to environment changes [8]. Thus, the coexistence of wireless mesh and wireless LANs poses one of the biggest design challenges. In this paper, we provide a detailed framework of a wireless mesh network testbed deployment and configuring in coexistence of other wireless LANs on the QU campus, in the

college of engineering. We present the site-specific signal strength measurement results for path loss, shadowing, and fading leveraging isolation between the WMN and existing WLAN infrastructure onsite. First, we performed a set of physical measurements to characterize the indoor channel for 802.11a/g wireless local area networks at 2.4/5 GHz frequencies. We used spectrum analyzer Rohde & Schwarz FSH8 and InSSIDer (free software for WLANs). Second, we picked up deployment locations for individual mesh routers as well as the gateway(s) to balance the connectivity and maximize the coverage and throughput. We proposed a 2-tier network architecture that optimizes the outdoor connectivity across the college cells, enhances the indoor coverage, and broadens the service provisioning for various types of end devices. We also investigated various environmental phenomena, impact, and issues on QUMESH deployment. Our studies show that, high performance wireless networking is affected by a number of internal and external variables. The interference with other Wi-Fi LANs, poses a significant challenge to the mesh network deployment, as well as node to node communication efficiency. We observed severe performance degradation especially over multihop wireless mesh transmission. The building structure, antenna selection, and their positions also have a significant impact on the link quality performance. We study the effects of these parameters and analyze the experimental results obtained under various network scenarios with different environmental conditions. Furthermore, we developed several management and configuration tools that allow users to configure, program, troubleshoot, interact with, and receive output data from nodes in the network, filling a gap in current testbed management solutions. The aim of these studies is to provide guidelines to setup a wireless mesh testbed yielding to a significant

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improvement in network connectivity and overall application performance. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We devote Section 2 for reviewing some related works that have been done so far to perform real testbed experimentations. In Section 3, our research works motivations are given. The QU wireless mesh network architecture will be described in Section 4. We provide a deeper analysis of the main obtained experimental results in Section 5. Section 6 summarizes the paper and outlines the future works.

the engineering building. We also, provide a detailed study and analysis of the coexistence of QUMESH and wireless LANs impact on the wireless mesh network performance. Moreover, we developed different configuration tools and scripts that enable a centralized network management.

3. MOTIVATIONS
First experiments performed at QUMESH, which is mainly in the focus of research, show that links constantly disconnect and reconnect. Therefore, this issue motivates us to investigate the causes behind this instability. Our focus in particular is to provide a framework for articulating and investigating the issues and questions related to QUMESH deployment and configuring in the coexistence with high interfering wireless transmission. We aim to study the link performance under various environment conditions. This way, we expect to be able to select appropriate configuration parameters of wireless mesh nodes and address adaptive mechanisms and schemes to overcome the observed issues.

2. RELATED WORKS
In the last decade several wireless mesh network testbeds have been setup at different locations, mostly in the educational campuses. Bicket et al. [1] evaluated a 37-node 802.11b community mesh network over an area of approximately four square kilometers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT mesh network (Roofnet), adopts off-the-shelf equipment, e.g. IEEE 802.11 wireless cards and standard Omni-directional antennas. The authors evaluated multiple aspects of the architecture such as the effect of node density on connectivity and throughput as well as the characteristics of wireless links. Gambiroza et al. [12] simulated a multihop wireless backhaul network consisting of multiple Transit Access Points (TAPs), which are connected to the Internet through multiple entry points. They studied TCP/UDP fairness, while considering different parameters such as the role of the link layer protocol, antenna technology, and traffic types. Based on the findings in [12], Camp et al. [13] deployed a two-tier mesh network in Houston, Texas, that aims at providing Internet access over a wide area with minimal infrastructure. The deployed network comprises an access tier and a backhaul tier. The access tier connects mobile clients with mesh nodes, whereas the backhaul tier interconnects the mesh nodes and forwards traffic to and from the Internet. Using this network, the authors presented a measurement driven deployment strategy and a data driven model to study the impact of design and topology decisions on network-wide performance. In [15], Raniwala et al. proposed a dual-radio wireless mesh network comprising 9 PC nodes, each equipped with two IEEE 802.11a interfaces. The authors show that, by employing sophisticated channel assignment approaches, network throughput can be significantly improved. De et al. [9] proposed a mobile 12-node experimentation testbed for multihop wireless networks. Each node in the testbed comprises a wireless computing device and a mobile robot. Fixed signal attenuators are used to limit the transmission range of the mobile nodes. In [11], Eriksson et al. evaluated the feasibility of an all-wireless office mesh network consisting of 21 multi-radio mesh nodes. The authors captured user traffic on office PCs with wired Ethernet connectivity and replayed them on the mesh network. A set of parameters, such as different routing metrics and hardware settings were evaluated. Raychaudhuri et al. [16] proposed an open access research testbed called Orbit for evaluating nextgeneration wireless network protocols. The testbed consists of an indoor radio grid emulator for controlled experiments and outdoor field trial software for end user evaluations. Lundgren et al. reported in [14] on their experience in designing and deploying the UCSB MeshNet, a 30-node wireless mesh testbed which covers several floors inside a building. S.M. ElRakabawy et al. presented ScaleMesh [10], a 20-node scalable dual-radio wireless mesh testbed based on IEEE 802.11b/g technology. Using ScaleMesh, large-scale mesh networks can be emulated within a miniaturized experimentation area by using variable signal attenuators. Our contributions in this work include design and deployment of wireless mesh testbed under some unique characteristics: special cell structure and heavy lab machinery of

4. QU MESH ARCHITECTURE
Each mesh node is a Dell desktop PC (specs) equipped with a Wistron Neweb CM9 Atheros 802.11a/b/g/n Dualband mPCI 5004 chipset wireless card with two external antennas (see Figure 1). The mesh nodes run Mandrake 10.2 with kernel version 2.6.11-6mdksmp and the open-source madwifi-0.9.4 driver is used to enable the wireless cards. All wireless cards operate in ad-hoc mode. All nodes support a variety of ad hoc routing protocols, such as OLSR and AODV, in addition to preparatory routing protocols [21]. Each wireless node further possesses a Gigabit Ethernet NIC, which is connected to the subnet of the QU through a Gigabit switch. This allows for the remote management of the wireless nodes from any wired host in the subnet. Hence, wireless experiments can be managed from a remote computer and traces can be analyzed through the wired network. The IEEE 802.11b/g/n standard supports 11 different channels. According to the IEEE 802.11 specifications [17], channels 1, 6, and 11 are non-overlapping. However, in practice, non-overlapping channels strongly depend on the vendor of the corresponding network cards and may strongly vary. We have used the different channels (from 2.402 GHz to 2.483 GHz) with maximum transmit power of 19dBm, and data rate of 2Mbps.

Figure 1: QUMESH nodes

4.1 Mesh Nodes Deployment Environment description and challenges: The building structure of QU College of engineering is based on an irregular grid of small unconnected two-floor buildings (commonly called cell) with indoor areas separated by outdoor corridors. The detailed

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structure and building layout is depicted in Figure 2. Such building architecture makes it challenging for deploying the mesh nodes because, on one hand, we cannot deploy mesh nodes in outdoor corridors for security, on the other hand, the mixed indoor/outdoor nature inherent in the building structures makes wireless channel impairments more evident due to changes in temperature between inside and outside the [25]. Moreover, more than 128 WLAN access points are deployed in 60 cells throughout the college, supporting 802.11g standards. The access points send frequent beacons in idle mode and have automatic channel settings, which allow APs to change channel setting dynamically. Such AP configuration makes hard to configure the mesh nodes.

all the mesh nodes to change e.g. channel, transmission power, etc. - Automatic configuration of the static routes on all mesh nodes to facilitate the study of various routing topologies. - Query and compare the configuration of all mesh nodes for troubleshooting.

QUMESH link state tool: This tool provides an automatic measuring of wireless link quality to get a snapshot of the testbed link state during the performance of research studies. Because of the dynamic nature of the wireless channel condition, such a tool is needed to measure, offline and at different times during the day, the condition of the wireless links, which are connecting mesh nodes logically. This tool measures average packet delay and packet loss rate metrics, on each link for the entire testbed. Furthermore, there are several tools that have been written to convert the binary data to graphical forms regarding these performance metrics. The tools developed are useful and crucial to conduct comprehensive measurement studies at QUMESH testbed.

5. DETAILED ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

In this section, we report the results of the extensive experiment sets that have been performed at QUMESH test-bed. In the first set of experiments, we study the physical measurements that have been done to characterize the indoor channel for 802.11a/g wireless local area networks at 2.4/5 GHz frequencies, regarding node location [20]. We used spectrum analyzer Rohde & Schwarz FSH8 and InSSIDer (free software for WLANs). Measurements are taken in indoor and outdoor environments at various locations on different times of the day. In the second set of experiments, we examine impacts of wireless mesh node equipment on the connectivity and packet loss ratio. Especially, we investigate the antenna selection and the their best position. In the third set of experiments, we observe the effect of WLAN interference and per channel load on the link performance. We describe results of the measured link in terms of packet loss and link latency metrics. Then, we investigate multihop wireless transmission performance at QUMESH. Finally, we provide a deeper analysis of the main test results obtained. The experiments reported in this paper are performed with no control on the WLAN APs, which poses different levels of intereference at different parts of the Mesh network testbed. The measurements were performed using the link state tool based on the ICMP III to quantify the link quality based on physical, MAC, and network layer settings. The packet size is equal to1500 bytes. Each plotted point in the presented graphs, is the average of 30 experiment iterations. During one iteration, 100 packets are sent from source to destination mesh nodes.

Figure 2 : Nodes connectivity in the QUMESH

Regarding the various environmental issues described above, we have conducted a set of measurements to characterize the wireless channel propagation during intra-cell and inter-cell communication [20]. These measurements helped us to identify the adequate placement of the QUMESH nodes. Based on these observations and previous measurements, we have adopted a phased approach for deploying mesh nodes [25]. These studies helped to increase the QUMESH connectivity and connect the isolated nodes to the mesh network as shown in Figure 2.

4.2 QUMESH tools

It has been identified that the troubleshooting and maintenance of the testbed is and will become a challenging job, especially, as the number of nodes increases. Thus, designing tools for automating these functionalities become evident. Despite the fact that many related tools exist, it has been shown that some major customizations would still be needed, which will avoid the manual configuration on all nodes; a job that is very time consuming and requires intensive human intervention. Therefore, we developed several tools to simplify the mesh node deployment, configuration, and monitoring in order to facilitate the research studies. These tools support the following major functionalities:

5.1 Physical layer measurements

For configuring the mesh nodes and optimizing their location at QUMESH, we have adopted some physical layer measurement approaches [20].

QUMESH configuration tool: This tool supports the following possible reconfigurations: - Automatic configuration of the wireless MadiWiFi driver on

2.4 GHz spectrum management: With only 3 nonoverlapping channels in the 2.4 GHz band, there isn't much flexibility in AP and antenna placement. If we look at Figure 3, we can see how the 2.4 GHz spectrum is divided into three channels for 802.11b and 802.11g. However, there is a "cheat" for the 2.4 GHz spectrum in which four channels are jammed closer together to minimize interference; this method is shown in Figure 4.

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Figure 5: Signal fluctuation with time

5.2 Impact of nodes physical equipment on link performance

Wireless network antennas typically perform best in open environments with minimum possible obstructions. The performance may be significantly affected if antennas are mounted near metal surfaces, concrete walls, or other highdensity materials, which is the case of our QUMESH test-bed. In the first phase of deployment, all wireless mesh nodes were equipped with a single 5dbi antenna (2.4 GHz 5 dBi Rubber Duck Omni Antenna RP-TNC). We used the measurement tools to measure the performance of the QUMESH links during different times during the day. The results showed that some nodes are isolated and so, cant communicate with any other node. In addition, there are some links that go up and down intermittently. To overcome this problem, we equipped nodes with 7dbi antenna (2.4 Ghz 7dBi Rubber Duck Omni Antenna RP-TNC) with the objective of increasing the link range and hence increase stability. However, we have found that nodes are still isolated and links were going down more frequently. We report the antenna patterns, which explain the interesting results obtained, depicted in Figures 6, 7, and 8. From these figures, we show that antenna selection is a critical step towards maintaining link stability because increasing the antenna gain may not be homogeneous across all directions, and hence may affect the link performance drastically. This is clear from Figures 6, and 7 for the 5, and 7 dbi antennas. However, the 8 dbi antenna (8dBi 2.4GHz ARS-N18 ALFA NETWORK) seems to be truly omni-directional and hence, the direction does not affect the link performance as shown in Figure 7. To investigate more on this issue, we performed the following experiments.

Figure 3: 3 non-overlapping channels in 2.4 GHz band

Figure 4: Four channels are jammed closer together to minimize interference

Measurement Procedure: We aimed to perform signal strength measurements for path loss, shadowing, and fading at 2.4/5 GHz frequencies. The major problem we faced during the signal strength measurement was the interference from large number of universitys access points (APs). Since the spectrum analyzer, which is a physical layer device cant differentiate signals from different access points on the basis of MAC address or APs service set identifier (SSID), we used inSSIDer software for measurements. The purpose of this study is to characterize the indoor channel for 802.11a/g wireless local area networks based on the path loss model described in [20]. The average path loss at distance between transmitter and receiver is given by:

Where is the path loss exponent, and is the close-in reference distance. We observed the signal levels at different distance intervals against distance ratio . Knowing the channel statistical models enables designer of communication systems to devise methods to combat the fading effect.
Figure 5 shows a typical fading pattern observed between two

Figure 6: 5 dbi pattern

Figure 7: 7 dbi pattern

nodes placed closed to each other within the Rsearch Lab at QU.

Figure 8: 8 dbi pattern

We placed two wireless mesh nodes close to each other in an indoor cell with no walls or obstructions in the range. The distance between the two nodes is 7 meters. We conducted experiments using 5 dbi,7 dbi, and 8 dbi antennas with different antenna directions. The results seem to confirm our initial observations. Indeed, when using 7dbi antennas the direction of the antennas affects the link performance, as shown in Figure 10. The link goes down almost consistently when placed the antenna at 45 direction. However, with 5dbi antennas, the direction does not affect the
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link performance as shown in Figure 11. Moreover, the performance results obtained with 8 dbi antenna is similar to 5dbi as shown in Figure 9, since the two nodes are close to each other.

during all testing period which guarantees a good connectivity between the two nodes.

Figure 12: Packet loss rate observed between nodes 5 and 2 with different antennas

Figure 9: Loss rate results regarding different antennas positions

The obtained experiment results show that link between wireless nodes using 5dbi antenna disconnect and connect frequently. However, with 8dbi (Alpha) antennas, we get more stable links. It also increases the reachability of all nodes to each other and so, enhance the network connectivity. Note that for the different experiment results presented in this paper, only 8dbi antennas are being used.

5.3 Building structure effects on link quality

Measurements carried out in various large structures, quantify both radio-signal attenuation and distortion (multipath) in the radio propagation channel, and showed that there are serious engineering college building structure issues. We devote this Subsection to disscuss these issues. We conducted multichannel experiments considering indoor links, connecting intra-floor and inter-floor mesh nodes. We aim to highlight the impact of the different frequency channels on both scenarios. Packet loss rate is depicted in Figure 13. The rate observed between nodes located at different floors is higher than the packet loss rate observed for nodes located at the same floor.

(a)antenna placed at 45 degree position

(b)antenna placed at 90 degree position

Figure 10: Loss rate obtained with 7dbi antennas placed on different positions

(a)antenna placed at 45 degree

(b)antenna placed at 90 degree

Figure 11: Loss rate obtained with 5dbi antennas placed on different positions

In this experiment, we study the link performance, using 5dbi and 8 dbi antennas, between nodes located at different floors.. We aim by this way to study the effect of this equipment on link quality in the presence of heavy building structure in the addition to WLAN interference. Figure 12 illustrates the effect of the new used antenna on link performance, in terms of packet loss rate observed between isolated wireless mesh nodes 5 (located at ground floor) and 2(located at first floor) (when using 5dbi antennas) on channel 9. With 5dbi antennas, the packet loss rate exceeds 90 % for long time periods, during which the connectivity between the two nodes shows a significant degradation. However, using 8dbi Alpha antenna the packet loss rate remains lower than 20 %

Figure 13 : Building structure effects on link quality

Although results seem to be evident, the gaps between different channel performance are large. For nodes in the same floor, the packet loss rate varies from 2% to 42 %. However, for nodes, in different floors, the loss percentage varies from 18% to 80%. Thus, one important conclusion is that some channels are able to mitigate more on the building problem, than other channels. This behavior would be perceived as an opportunity for addressing new mechanisms to come up with the observed issues and enhance the

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link quality based on an inteligent channel assignement. 5.4 Wireless LAN traffic load effect
Due to the strong co-existence (i.e. 2.4GHz spectrum sharing) of the QUMESH testbed and the wireless LAN of QU, it has been shown; that the interference caused by the university WLAN causes the mesh network links instability. Also, it has been identified that WLAN access points are configured to jump across non-overlapping channels intermittently. Furthermore, our experiment results showed that some channels exhibit higher interference than others. This behavior creates restrictions on what channels can be used on which link. Therefore, we use Kismet tool II to sniff the WLAN traffic load observed for different frequency channels (1, 9, and 11) during three days, one day for each channel. Kismet tool detects the presence of wireless networks, including those with hidden SSIDs. In parallel, we study the performance behaviour of a QUMESH link considering different channel settings. Then, we analyse the Kismet logs to identify the overhead transmitted over each channel. To evaluate link quality, we consider an indoor mesh link connecting the wireless mesh nodes 4 and 9. We enable communication between the two nodes during 72 hours. In the first day, the nodes communicated over channel 1, the second day they used channel 9, and the third day channel 11 was assigned to these nodes. Figure 14 shows the behaviour of the overhead that is being transmitted by WLAN traffic over the frequency channels 6, 9, and 11. Figure 15 shows the packet loss results observed for one mesh link using channels 1, 11, and 9. Figure 16 shows the obtained average delay using the three channels. From the plots, we observe that the highest overhead is transmitted over channel 1. Thus, the packet loss rate measured for this channel is higher than the packet loss rate measured for channel 9, which has the lowest overhead among the three channels, as shown in Figure 14. Furthermore, the huge amount of WLAN traffic load can not only severely degrade the performance of a wireless mesh, but also could affect the network connectivity. For example, we observed that the packet loss rate reaches more than 90 % using channel 1, caused by high interference, which leads to a complete link failure.

Figure 15: Packet Losses observed over different channels between nodes 6 and 7

Figure 16: Average delay observed for different channels between nodes 6 and 7

5.5 Multi-hop wireless transmission performance at QUMESH

We performed a set of experiments to evaluate the end-to-end path performance when considering multi-hop transmission. Figure 17 shows that, the problem becomes more complicated in multi-hop network, due partly to inter-hop interference and ratehop count tradeoff. We observe that the packet loss rate increases, as the number of hops to travel increases. The connection between source mesh node and destination mesh node is constantly connecting and disconnecting when the number of hops is greater than 4. Moreover, increasing the number of hops increases the average end-to-end delay as shown in Figure 18. The results obtained using channel 9 outperforms the results obtained using channels 1, 11, and 3. The rapid degradation of multihop wireless transmission performance results poses a significant challenge, especially, for multimedia streaming and delay sensitive applications.

Figure 14: WLAN traffic load observed over different channels

Figure 17: Packet Loss rate for muti-hop transmission

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REFERENCES
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We concluded that mesh node should be configured to use the intermediate overlapping channels opportunistically. Hence, QUMESH node implementations should rely on channel switching capability of the wireless radios to ensure network connectivity and enhance real-time application performance. Such approach calls for cognitive schemes that sense and perform dynamic channel assignment to mitigate un-avoided interference. However, dynamic channel switching at mesh node level incurs overhead in terms of switching delay due to both software and hardware restrictions [18]. This can be prohibitive for many delay sensitive, real-time applications. The situation can be worse in the case of a multihop network, as every node along the traffic path may require a channel switch that adds up to the overall end-to-end delay. Therefore, it is extremely interesting to note that, from our experiment results, QUMESH outdoor/indoor links do not need to switch channel too frequently for data transmissions. For QUMESH indoor links, the channel allocation policy that should be addressed, has to consider also an efficient cross-layer routing strategies that can make use of the flexibilities of a multichannel network while favoring delay sensitive applications by routing them on low delay paths.

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6. CONCLUSION

I. II. III.

In

this framework, we propose characterization studies in deployment and performance evaluation of wireless mesh network in coexistence of other wireless LANs. We described the unique aspects of our QUMESH testbed that differentiate it from other existing wireless mesh testbeds. We intensively studied the link quality performance. Specifically, we provided insight into the runtime issues from the point of view of WLAN traffic load that poses significant adverse effect on QUMESH performance and connectivity. Furthermore, we investigated the impacts of special building structure of the engineering college.

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[20] I. Ahmed, and al. Characterization of the Indoor/outdoor Radio Propagation Channel at at 2.4 GHz. IEEE GCC February 19-22, 2011, Dubai, UAE.

To mitigate these challenges, efficient mechanisms are needed to handle the coexistence issues. We recommend the use of intermediate channels (i.e. channels 9 and/or 4) in order to overcome the Wi-Fi interference problems. Furthermore, we should address dynamic channel assignment technique to cognitively change the channel based on sensing the channel quality. Moreover, selection and proper use of the right antenna can dramatically improve the network connectivity. More importantly, it is necessary to address more intelligent upper layer protocols to mitigate link instability and optimize performance. In our future works, we aim to perform several evaluation protocols and address cross-layer mechanisms to enhance mesh network connectivity and performance. ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This work is supported by Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) Project No.08-374-2-144.

[21] D. Koutsonikolas, and al. Pacifier: High-Throughput, Reliable Multicast without Crying Babies in Wireless Mesh Networks, IEEE INFOCOM 2010. [22] L. Romdhani, and al. QUMESH: Wireless mesh network deployment and configuration in harsh environment, accepted in IEEE WCNC 2012 Paris, France.

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