Gateway placement for throughput optimization in wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we address the problem of gateway placement for throughput optimization in multi-hop wireless mesh networks. Assume that each mesh node in the mesh network has a traffic demand. Given the number of gateways need to be deployed (denoted by k) and the interference model in the network, we study where to place exactly k gateways in the mesh network such that the total throughput is maximized while it also ensures a certain fairness among all mesh nodes. We propose a novel grid-based gateway deployment method using a cross-layer throughput optimization. Our proposed method can also be extended to work with multi-channel and multi-radio mesh networks. Simulation result demonstrates that our method can effectively exploit the resources available and perform much better than random and fixed deployment methods.