This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts

for publication in the IEEE ICC 2009 proceedings

An Efficient MAC Layer Handoff Scheme for

WiFi-based Multichannel Wireless Mesh Networks∗
Zhenxia Zhang and Azzedine Boukerche
PARADISE Research Laboratory
SITE, University of Ottawa, Canada
Email: {zzhan036, boukerch}@site.uottawa.ca

Abstract—Compared to traditional wireless networks, Wireless
Mesh Networks (WMNs) are more efficient in terms of deploy-
ment, configuration, and maintenance. However, connecting all
routers through wireless connection in WMNs results in remark-
ably lower bandwidth of the network backbone. Multichannel
technology, where non-interfering channels are used to enable
mesh routers to send and receive packets simultaneously, has been
extensively adopted to improve the throughput of WMNs, and
providing seamless roaming in multichannel WMNs has become
an important topic in WMN research. In this paper, a novel
MAC layer handoff scheme is proposed as a means of minimizing
handoff latency in WiFi-based multichannel WMNs for seamless
communication in real-time applications. By designing a dynamic
grouping algorithm for channel selection and allowing mesh
routers to switch channels for probe message reply, this new
scheme can shorten the waiting time for the detection of available
access routers, decrease loss ratio of data packets during handoff,
and consequently achieve smooth handoff in the MAC layer.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are an important com-
ponent of the next generation networks for providing wireless
connection for mobile terminals. Most WMNs have backbones
that are composed of mesh routers in order to forward packets
[1]. In a WMN, all of the connections are wireless; therefore,
the backbone of a WMN has less bandwidth than that of
a wireless network using wired infrastructure. To increase
the capacity of the backbone, mesh routers equipped with
multiradios are allowed to work in different channels [2]. Thus,
the mesh routers can send or receive packets in different fre-
quencies simultaneously by utilizing non-interfering channels.
Many works have proposed to increase the throughput of the
multichannel WMNs[3][4][5][6].
WiFi is the most common technology for wireless connec-
tion. In WiFi-based WMNs, handoff occurs very often during
roaming due to a short transmission range. Handoff therefore
plays an important role in supporting seamless roaming. A
whole handoff process can be divided into two phases: the
MAC layer handoff and the network layer handoff. In the MAC
layer handoff, the mesh client selects a new AR based on the
signal quality and reassociates with the new AR in physical
connection. In the network layer handoff, the mesh client
re-establishes the logical connection with the correspondent
nodes by finding a new routing path. The original MAC
∗ This work is partially supported by NSERC, Canada Research Chairs
Program, ORF, OIT/Distinguished Researcher Award, EAR Award.
layer handoff latency of IEEE 802.11b/g [7] protocols is
about hundreds of milliseconds, which makes it unsuitable
for seamless roaming in WMNs. Thus, many works have
proposed to decrease MAC layer handoff latency in IEEE
802.11b/g protocols. However, migrating these schemes to
multichannel WMNs cannot meet the requirements of a real-
time application. In multichannel WMNs, two neighboring
ARs may have to send packets through multihops since they
use different channels, which means that data sent between
the neighbors will encounter higher delay and loss ratio than
WMNs using one channel. Thus, it is especially important to
optimize the MAC layer handoff solution for the multichannel
WMNs.
In this paper, we propose a novel MAC layer handoff
scheme to decrease scan time for multichannel wireless mesh
networks. The access routers can switch to the channel pre-
defined by the mesh client in order to send back the probe
response messages. Therefore, after the mesh clients broadcast
the probe request messages in a channel, they switch to the
next channel and broadcast the probe request messages without
waiting. Channels are categorized to priority-based groups,
and after broadcasting the probe request messages in all of
a group’s channels, the mesh client returns to the original
connection channel to continue communication. Moreover, the
probing process can be stopped before the whole scan is
finished in order to diminish latency, provided a certain AR has
better signal strength than at the optimized level. Using this
scheme, we believe that the handoff latency during the MAC
layer handoff can be minimized, and that smooth handoff can
be realized. To our best knowledge, this is the first optimized
MAC layer handoff protocol for multichannel wireless mesh
networks.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section
2, background and some protocols for improving handoff
performance are presented. The detailed scheme is proposed
in Section 3. Section 4 describes the simulation and provides
some discussion on its performance. Finally, Section 5 sum-
marizes and concludes this paper.
II. BACKGROUND AND R ELATED W ORKS
In IEEE 802.11 [7] protocol, the MAC layer handoff can
be divided to three phases: scan, reauthentication and reasso-
ciation [8]. There are two kinds of scan, active and passive.
Using active scan, the mobile clients broadcast probe request

978-1-4244-3435-0/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2009 proceedings
messages and wait for the response messages from the access
points in each channel. Conversely, in a passive scan, the
mobile clients listen to the beacon messages from the access
points in each channel. To guarantee that the mesh clients
receive the beacon messages, the waiting time in a passive
scan is longer than in an active scan. Therefore, active scan
is a more reasonable option for seamless handoff according to
most of the literature.
Probing channels to select the next associated channel is
the primary cause of handoff latency [8][9]. Most of the
improvements made therefore try to minimize scanning time.
The total scan time is affected by both the number of prob-
ing channels and the waiting time for each channel. The
avoidance of scanning unnecessary channels is an efficient
approach to decreasing the scan time. Shin et al. abstract the
relationship between APs in order to reduce the number of
probing channels, by using neighbor graphs and non-overlap
graphs [10]. Meanwhile, in [11], a channel mask is used to
predict the probable channels for the next association, and
a caching structure is adopted to record the former handoffs
for prediction. Based on selective scanning, Mustafa et al.
propose pre-scanning in [12]. Rre-scanning in the background
is invoked and the top 5 APs are stored in the dynamic caching
structure. Consequently, when the handoff is triggered, the
mobile node can reassociate with the AP in the buffer, and
the scan time is minimized.
Another means of reducing scan latency is to reduce the
waiting time. M inChannelT ime and M axChannelT ime
are two important parameters in active scan. When the mobile
terminal waits for the responses, if neither responds and no
traffic is detected during M inChannelT ime, the channel
is considered as empty. Otherwise, the mesh client must
wait for M axChannelT ime to collect probe responses. This
said, waiting time in each channel is significantly affected
by M inChannelT ime and M axChannelT ime. In [8], the
authors suggest that the M inChannelT ime could be 6.5ms
and the M axChannelT ime could be 11ms. Velayos et al.
propose a formula to calculate the MAC layer handoff time;
based on their experiments, the search time of the active scan
can be reduced by 20% when the M inChannelT ime is set to
1ms and the M axChannelT ime is set to 10.24ms [9]. In [13],
Chintala et al. propose a novel scheme, called FHAP, to waive
the waiting time using inter-APs communication. Instead of
sending back the probe reply message, the APs relay the reply
messages to the original AP. Therefore, the mobile client does
not need to wait for the reply, and it can directly switch to the
following channels. Since all of the connections in WMNs are
wireless, multihop inter-AP communication has more latency
and a higher loss ratio than the wired backbone, especially in
multichannel WMNs where less location distance does not
mean fewer hops. This scheme is therefore not especially
suitable for multichannel WMNs.
Finally, smooth MAC handoff is introduced in [14]. The
channels are divided into groups, and after scanning one group,
the mobile terminal can return to the original channel to
continue communication. Multiradios are also used in mobile
terminals to reduce MAC layer handoff [15]. The obvious
drawback is that using the second radio incurs extra cost.
Recently, studies of handoff over WMNs focus mostly on
how to reduce the network layer handoff latency [16][17]
[18]. Only [19] tries to minimize the MAC layer handoff over
WMNs by letting mesh clients access the backhaul channel.
A similar approach is taken in [13] which waives the waiting
time. [19] allows the mesh routers to provide different AP
channels. However, it assumes that all of the relay routers
work in the same backhaul channel. Since the mesh routers
are assigned different channels to improve the throughput in
multichannel WMNs, this scheme cannot be adopted.
III. P ROPOSED S CHEME
In this section, our efficient MAC layer handoff scheme is
proposed. In general, we allow the mesh routers to switch to
the mesh client’s communication channel so it can reply the
probe messages and waive the probe waiting time; further-
more, we use a dynamic grouping algorithm to predict the
most probable channels for reducing unnecessary scanning.
A. Detailed Design
Three threshold of Received Signal Strength (RSS) are
predefined, RSSmin , RSSres and RSSmax . RSSmin refers
to the minimum acceptable RSS for sending and receiving
packets. The handoff process is triggered when it has been
noticed that the current AR’s RSS, denoted as RSScurr , is
lower than RSSmin . RSSmax is used to terminate the probing
process before the whole scan is finished, to decrease scan
latency. RSSres is introduced in order to waive unnecessary
response messages. When the access routers receive the probe
messages, the routers which notice that the RSS is greater
than the RSSres reply the probe request. RSSres equals to
the current RSS, RSScurr , plus a variable Δ used to prevent
ping-pong effect.
All of the channels are categorized into three priority-based
groups: high priority (GroupH), normal priority (GroupN )
and low priority (GroupL). A higher priority increases the
likelihood of the new access router working in that channel.
The group members are maintained by a dynamic grouping
algorithm.
When the mesh client finds that the current RSS (RSScurr )
is lower than the predefined threshold (RSSmin ), it begins the
probing process. The mesh client scans the channels group-by-
group on the basis of priority. First, the channels in GroupH
are scanned. The mesh client sends a notification message
to the current AR to claim that the client is about to start
scanning. Upon receiving the notification message, the AR
starts to buffer all of the packets sent to the client. The mesh
client then switches to the first channel in GroupH, and broad-
casts the probe message. The signal strength threshold for
the response, RSSres , as well as the channel Channelcomm
where the mesh client communicates with the former AR and
a predefined variable Tdelay which indicates that the client will
return to Channelcomm to collect the response messages after
it, are encapsulated in the message. The mesh client does not
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2009 proceedings

A special scenario, where a group contains only one mem-

ber that is the current communication channel is considered
separately. The mesh client does not need to switch channels
and it can send and receive data packets when it is waiting
for a response; as a result, the AR does not need to buffer
the packets during the scan. Other steps are the same as steps
following the probing process described above.
B. Dynamic Grouping
Channels are divided into three groups based on the basis of
their priority. A higher priority means that the channel is more
likely to be selected as the next channel. Priority is measured
as a float number, and its range is [0, 2]. In addition, the
priority range for the high-priority group is (1.5, 2], the range
for the normal priority group is [0.5, 1.5], and the one of the
low priority group is [0, 0.5). The initial priority value of the
non-interfering channels is 2 and that of other channels is 0,
assuming that in a multichannel WMN, the non-interfering
channels are more likely to be used as the AR channel than
the other channels. Each time the scan is finished, the priority
value of each channel is recalculated. If that of the new channel
is the same as that of the former channel, its priority adds 3
* α, and α is the factor used to caculate the priority of the
new channel. If the new channel is one of the non-interfering
channels, other non-interfering channels’ priorities also add 3 *
α, assuming the other non-interfering channels are likely to be
used after the next handoff. The priorities of empty channels
Fig. 1. Flowchart of proposed MAC layer handoff in client side subtract β that is the factor used to caculate the priority of
the empty channel, and the priorities of other channels remain
the same. The procedure for calculating priority is shown in
need to wait for the response messages; it simply switches Algorithm 1.
to the next channel in GroupH and broadcasts the probe
message again. After the client broadcasts the probe messages Algorithm 1 Calculate priority
in all channels in GroupH, it switches to the communication 1: Ci , Cj : Channel i, j
channel to restore the connection, asks the former AR to send 2: Pi , Pj : Priority of channel i, j
the buffered packets and initiates the timer T imerGroupH . The 3:
4: for all Channel Ci do
ARs calculate RSS from the probe messages, and the ARs 5: if Ci is empty then
that have better RSS than RSSres initiate a timer T imerdelay , 6: Pi = Pi - β;
which will expire after TDelay . When T imerdelay expires, the 7: end if
AR switches to Channelcomm to send the response message 8: if Ci is the new channel then
back to the mesh client. If the mesh client finds an AR with 9: if Ci is also the old channel then
10: Pi = Pi + 3 * α;
better RSS than RSSmax , that AR is selected as the new 11: else
AR, T imerGroupH is cleared, and the whole probing stage 12: Pi = Pi + α;
is completed. Otherwise, the retrieved RSS is stored as the 13: end if
best RSS, and the AR with the best RSS is considered as 14: if Ci is one of the non-interfering channels then
the candidate AR. After T imerGroupH expires, the probing 15: for other non-interfering channel Cj do
16: Pj = 3 * α;
process progresses to the following stages, and channels in 17: end for
GroupN and GroupL are scanned. In the next steps, the same 18: end if
operation as in the first stage must be carried out. After the 19: end if
scanning is completed, if no AR has better quality than the 20: end for
predefined threshold, the AR with the best RSS is selected
as the new AR. Then, the mesh client reauthenticates and
reassociates with the new AR. After that, the MAC layer IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
handoff is finished and the handoff in the upper layer can In this section, performance evaluation is presented. We
be triggered. The flowchart of our scheme on the client side modify the Network Simulator - ns2 (Release 2.33) to simulate
is shown in Figure 1. four MAC layer handoff solutions: standard handoff using full
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2009 proceedings

250 250
Full Scan Full Scan
Selective Scan Selective Scan
FHAP FHAP
Our Solution Our Solution

200 200
Handoff latency (ms)

Handoff latency (ms)

150 150

100 100

50 50

0 0
0 16 32 64 128 256 384 512 0 16 32 64 128 256 384 512
Background Data Traffic (Kbps) Background Data Traffic (Kbps)

Fig. 2. Handoff latency using 1 AR channel Fig. 3. Handoff latency using 3 AR channels

250
Full Scan
Selective Scan
active scan [7], handoff using selective scan [11], FHAP [13], FHAP
Our Solution
and our own solution. There are 30 access routers randomly
200
deployed in our experiments. Different channels are used to
construct the relay backbone for increasing throughput. A
Handoff latency (ms)
Random Waypoint Mobility Model is used to generate the 150

mobile client’s movement path. The maximal velocity is 5

m/s, pause between movements is 1s, M axChannelT ime
100
is 11 ms, M inChannelT ime is 5 ms, channel switch delay
is 5 ms, probe delay is 0.1 ms, and radio range is 150
m. Moreover, α is set to 0.1 and β is set to 0.2. For each 50

experiment, 33 simulations are performed to calculate the 95%

confidence range, and each simulation runs 1000 s.
0
There are 14 channels designated in IEEE 802.11b/g [7], 0 16 32 64 128
Background Data Traffic (Kbps)
256 384 512

only 11 of which channels are used in North America. Channel

1, 6 and 11 are three non-interfering channels. To measure
handoff latency, three scenarios must be considered: access
routers using 1 channel, 3 non-interfering channels, and all
11 channels as their AR channels. Moreover, background
data traffic is established in the network in order to obtain
the relationship between handoff latency and the background
traffic load.
In the first scenario, all ARs provide access service in
the same channel. The handoff latency in four schemes is
illustrated in Figure 2. The performance of the selective scan
is similar to that of the full scan. When the selective scan
calculates the scan mask, the mask of the current channel is
always 0, the selective scan in this scenario actually does a
full scan all the time. FHAP reduces the handoff latency by
avoiding waiting time, but it still exceeds the 50ms preferred
for real-time applications. The handoff latency in our solution
is always less than 30ms, despite different background traffic
load, because our solution can accurately predict the next
channel.
In the scenario where 3 non-interfering AR channels are
used, the access routers provide connection for mobile clients
in channels 1, 6 and 11. In our opinion, this scenario would be
the most common one. In Figure 3, we can see the performance
comparison of the four schemes in this scenario. Although
Fig. 4. Handoff latency using 11 AR channels
FHAP avoids waiting time for probe messages, it needs to scan
all of channels; therefore, its performance is similar to that in
the first scenario. Selective scan can predict the next available
channels with almost full accuracy, and it uses less time to
finish handoff than full scan and FHAP. Unlike selective scan,
except when reducing probing channels, our solution avoids
the waiting time by letting ARs switch channels when they
send probe reply messages. Thus, our solution still has the
best performance in this scenario.
In the third scenario, all 11 channels are used as AR
channels, access routers are assigned AR channels randomly.
The comparisons for handoff latency are illustrated in Figure 4.
Although selective scan and FHAP here reduce handoff latency
compared with full scan, their latency is still higher than 50ms.
They are therefore not suitable for real-time applications such
as VoIP. Our scheme has the least handoff latency, which is
less than 50ms, since both the waiting time and the number of
probing channels are minimized. Moreover, our scheme scans
less channels than selective scan through the use of dynamic
grouping.
Inter-frame delay and packets loss ratio are two other
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2009 proceedings
50
40
Inter-frame delay (ms)
30
20
10
0
0 100 200 300 400 500
Data packet number
Fig. 5. Inter-frame Delay
TABLE I
DATA PACKETS LOSS RATIO
Scenario Packets sent
1 AR channel 10000
3 AR channels 10000
11 AR channels 10000
important parameters in real-time applications. To test them,
CBR traffic is established between two mobile terminals. One
client sends a 160-byte UDP packet every 20ms to the other
client, to simulate the G.711 encoded/decoded VoIP stream.
In each simulation, 10000 UDP packets are fully sent. Figure
5 shows the inter-frame delay of 1000 data packets in a
simulation using 3 AR channels, as an example. Since the
relay backbone is constructed by wireless connection and the
handoff occurs frequently, the jitter is easily observed in Figure
5. However, the inter-frame delay is still almost less than 50ms.
Moreover, the average packet loss ratio is shown in Table I.
This loss ratio is acceptable for the real-time application.
In summary, our scheme minimizes the handoff latency to
less than 50ms in the three scenarios discussed above, and the
inter-frame delay is also less than 50ms. In addition, the loss
ratio is very low, at less than 0.1%. Our scheme is therefore
very well-suited to real-time applications.
V. C ONCLUSION
In WMNs, constructing the whole network backbone with
wireless connections leads to various advantages but at the
expense of decreased bandwidth, short transmission range and
more frequent congestion. More occurrences of handoff are
required in order to maintain the connection; providing seam-
less handoff in multichannel WMNs for real-time applications
has therefore become a challenging task. This paper presents
an efficient MAC layer handoff scheme for minimizing the
latency during handoff. Instead of replying to probe requests
immediately, access routers are proposed to switch to the
client’s communication channel and send response after a
delay, which allows the mesh client to broadcast a probe
request without waiting. A dynamic grouping algorithm is
Inter-frame delay designed to select the appropriate channel from priority-based
groups quickly. Experimental results prove that this scheme
can reduce handoff latency to 50ms or less, which meets the
requirements for general real-time applications.
R EFERENCES
[1] I. F. Akyildiz, X. Wang, and W. Wang, “Wireless mesh networks: A
survey,” Computer Networks, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 445–487, March 2005.
[2] A. Boukerche, “Algorithms and protocols for wireless and mobile ad
hoc networks,” 2008.
[3] A. Raniwala and T. cker Chiueh, “Architecture and algorithms for an
ieee 802.11-based multi-channel wireless mesh network,” in Proceeding
of IEEE INFOCOM 2005, vol. 3, March 2005, pp. 2223–2234.
[4] A. Boukerche, “Handbook of algorithms for wireless networking and
mobile computing,” 2005.
600 700 800 900 1000 [5] M. Nekoui, A. Ghiamatyoun, S. N. Esfahani, and M. Soltan, “Iterative
cross layer schemes for throughput maximization in multi-channel wire-
less mesh networks,” in Proceedings of 16th International Conference
on Computer Communications and Networks, 2007., August 2007, pp.
1088–1092.
[6] K. Karakayali, J. H. Kang, M. Kodialam, and K. Balachandran, “Joint
resource allocation and routing for ofdma-based broadband wireless
mesh networks,” in IEEE International Conference on Communications,
Packets lost Loss ratio 2007, June 2007, pp. 5088–5092.
3.291 0.033% [7] “IEEE standard for information technology-telecommunications and
information exchange between systems-local and metropolitan area
6.289 0.063% networks-specific requirements - part 11: Wireless lan medium
8.742 0.087% access control (mac) and physical layer (phy) specifications,”
http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/802.11.html, 2007.
[8] W. A. Arunesh Mishra, Minho Shin, “An empirical analysis of the
ieee 802.11 mac layer handoff process,” ACM SIGCOMM Computer
Communication Review, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 93–102, April 2003.
[9] H. Velayos and G. Karlsson, “Techniques to reduce the ieee 802.11b
handoff time,” in 2004 IEEE International Conference on Communica-
tions, vol. 7, June 2004, pp. 3844–3848.
[10] M. Shin, A. Mishra, and W. A. Arbaugh, “Improving the latency of
802.11 hand-offs using neighbor graphs,” in Proceedings of the 2nd
international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services,
June 2004, pp. 19–26.
[11] S. Shin, A. G. Forte, A. S. Rawat, and H. Schulzrinne, “Reducing mac
layer handoff latency in ieee 802.11 wireless lans,” in Proceedings of
the second international workshop on Mobility management and wireless
access protocols, October 2004, pp. 70–83.
[12] N. Mustafa, W. Mahmood, A. A. Chaudhry, and M. Ibrahim, “Pre-
scanning and dynamic caching for fast handoff at mac layer in ieee
802.11 wireless lans,” in IEEE International Conference on Mobile
Adhoc and Sensor Systems Conference, November 2005, pp. 1–8.
[13] V. M. Chintala and Q.-A. Zeng, “Novel mac layer handoff schemes
for ieee 802.11 wireless lans,” in IEEE Wireless Communications and
Networking Conference, March 2007, pp. 4435–4440.
[14] Y. Liao and L. Cao, “Practical schemes for smooth MAC layer handoff
in 802.11 wireless networks,” in International Symposium on a World
of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, June 2006, pp. 1–10.
[15] K. Ramachandran, S. Rangarajan, and J. C. Lin, “Make-before-break
mac layer handoff in 802.11 wireless networks,” in 2006 IEEE ICC,
vol. 10, June 2006, pp. 4818–4823.
[16] V. Navda, A. Kashyap, and S. R. Das, “Design and evaluation of
iMesh: an infrastructure-mode wireless mesh network,” in Sixth IEEE
International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia
Networks, June 2005, pp. 164–170.
[17] Y. Amir, C. Danilov, M. Hilsdale, R. Musaloiu-Elefteri, and N. Rivera,
“Fast handoff for seamless wireless mesh networks,” in Proceedings of
the 4th international conference on Mobile systems, applications and
services, June 2006, pp. 83–95.
[18] A. Boukerche and Z. Zhang, “A hybrid-routing based intra-domain
mobility management scheme for wireless mesh networks,” in Proceed-
ings of the 11th international symposium on Modeling, analysis and
simulation of wireless and mobile systems, October 2008, pp. 268–275.
[19] Y. He and D. Perkins, “BASH: A backhaul-aided seamless handoff
scheme for wireless mesh networks,” in International Symposium on
a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, June 2008, pp.
1–8.