A Simple End-to-End Throughput Model for 802.11 Multi-Radio Multi-Rate Wireless Mesh Networks

We address the problem of estimating the end-to-end throughput of UDP flows in a multi-radio, multi-channel, and multi-rate 802.11 wireless mesh network (WMN). Estimates of the end-to-end throughput of flows in a WMN can facilitate the design of traffic-aware routing and channel assignment algorithms. We introduce a simple and intuitive model that captures key features of 802.11 WMNs such as contention, interference, and performance degradation due to links with low transmission rates. We use simulation to validate the accuracy of the proposed model in various scenarios for a network topology containing multiple transmitters and wired gateways.