Joint variable width spectrum allocation and link scheduling for wireless mesh networks

In wireless mesh networks with frequency-agile radios, an algorithm of dynamically combining consecutive channels has recently been proposed. However, the available channel widths are limited in the algorithm. In order to further improve the fairness or the throughput under given fairness, we propose a joint variable width spectrum allocation and link scheduling optimization algorithm. Our algorithm is composed of time division multiple access for no interface conflict and frequency division multiple access for no signal interference. In the first phase, we use as few time slots as possible to assign at least one time slots to each radio link with Max-Min fairness. In the second phase, our design jointly allocates the lengths of time slots as well as the spectral widths and center frequencies of radio links in each time slot. Numerical results indicate that compared to the existing algorithm, our algorithm significantly increases the fairness or the throughput under given fairness.