Title:Path Assignment in Mesh Networks at the Edge of Wireless Networks

Abstract:We consider a mesh network at the edge of a wireless network that connects users with the core network via multiple base stations. For this scenario we present a novel tree-search based algorithm that determines the optimal communication path to the core network for each user by maximizing the signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio (SNIR) for each chosen path. We show that for three mesh networks with differing sizes, our algorithm chooses paths whose minimum SNIR is 3 dB to 18 dB better than that obtained via an algorithm that disregards the effect of interference within the network, 16 dB to 20 dB better than a random algorithm that chooses the paths randomly, and 0.5 dB to 7 dB better compared to a recently introduced genetic algorithm (GA). Furthermore, we show that our algorithm has a lower complexity compared to the GA in networks where its performance is within 2 dB.