Issues in WMN: As WMNs are also multi-hop wireless networks like ad hoc networks, the protocols developed for

ad hoc networks work well for WMNs. Many challenging issues in ad hoc networks have been addressed in recent years. WMNs have inherent characteristics such as a xed mesh backbone formed by mesh routers, resource-rich mesh routers, and resource-constrained clients compared to ad hoc networks. Due to this, WMNs require considerable work to address the problems that arise in each layer of the protocol stack and system implementation. 1. Capacity: The primary concern of WMNs is to provide high-bandwidth connectivity to community and enterprise users. Traditional wireless ad hoc networks and WMNs were based on a single-channel or single-radio interface. WMNs, irrespective of its simplicity and high fault tolerance, face a significant limitation of limited network capacity. In a single-channel wireless network, the capacity of the network degrades as the number of hops or the diameter of the network increases due to interference. The capacity of the WMN is affected by many factors such as network architecture, node density, number of channels used, node mobility, trafc pattern, and transmission range. A clear understanding of the effect of these factors on capacity of the WMNs provides insight to protocol design, architecture design, and deployment of WMNs. Capacity analysis: In the last decade, much research has been carried out to study the capacity of ad hoc networks which can be adopted to investigate the capacity of WMNs. In [2] Gupta and Kumar analytically studied the upper and lower bounds of the capacity of wireless ad hoc networks. They showed that the throughput capacity of the nodes reduces signicantly when node density increases. The maximum achievable throughput of randomly

placed n identical nodes each with a capacity of W bits/second is

)

) bits/second under a non-interference protocol. Even

under optimal circumstances the maximum achievable throughput is only (

) bits/second. The capacity of the network can be increased

by deploying relaying nodes and using a multi-hop path for transmission. The IEEE 802.11 standard [4] provides a number of channels in the available radio spectrum, but some of them may be interfering with each other. If the interfering channels are used simultaneously, then the data gets corrupted at the receiving end. But the non-overlapping channels can be used simultaneously by different nodes in the same transmission range without any collision of the data. IEEE 802.11b [6] provides 3 such non-overlapping channels at 2.4 GHz band and IEEE 802.11a [5] provides 13 non-overlapping channels at 5 GHz band. These orthogonal channels can be used simultaneously at different nodes in the network to improve the capacity of the network. In multi-channel multi-radio communication each node is provided with more than one radio interface (say m) and each interface is assigned one of the orthogonal channels available (say n). If each node has n number of radio interfaces (m = n) and each orthogonal channel is assigned to one interface, then the network can achieve nfold increase in capacity because the n interfaces can transmit simultaneously without any interference with each other. But normally the number of interfaces is less than the number of available channels (m < n) due to the cost of the interfaces and the complexity of the nodes. In this case an m-fold increase in capacity can be achieved by assigning m interfaces with m different orthogonal channels. Moreover, when m < n the capacity bound of a multichannel multi-radio wireless mesh network depends on the ratio of n and m [7]. Physical Layer:

The network capacity mainly depends on the physical layer technique used. There are a number of physical layer techniques available with different operating frequencies and they provide different transport capacity in wire-less communications. Some existing wireless radios even provide multiple transmission rates by different combinations of modulation and coding techniques [6]. In such networks, the transmission rate is chosen by link adaptation techniques. Normally, link signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) from the physical layer is considered for link adaptation, but this alone does not describe the signal quality in the environment like frequencyselective fading channel. To overcome the problems with RF transmission, other physical layer techniques have been used for wireless communications. Some high-speed physical layer techniques are available which improve the capacity of the wireless networks signicantly. Some of the techniques for improving the capacity of WMNs are described in this section. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM): The OFDM technique is based on the principle of Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) with digital modulation schemes. The bit stream to be transmitted is split into a number of parallel low bit rate streams. The available frequency spectrum is divided into many sub-channels and each low bit rate stream is transmitted by modulating over a subchannel using a standard modulation scheme such as Phase Shift Keying (PSK) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). The primary advantage of OFDM is its ability to work under severe channel conditions, such as multi-path and narrow-band interference, without complex equalization lters at the transmitter and receiver. The OFDM technique has increased the transmission rate of IEEE 802.11 networks from 11 to 54 Mbps.