Title: Multi-Channel Wireless Networks: Capacity, Protocols, and Implementation

Abstract:
Recent years have seen increased use of multi-hop wireless networking paradigm for building mesh networks, sensor networks, ad hoc networks, etc. Building large multi-hop networks, while supporting the growing throughput demands of user applications, requires significant improvements to network capacity. In this talk, I will focus on utilizing multiple wireless channels for improving network capacity.

Popular wireless technologies, such as IEEE 802.11 that are used in multi-hop networks, provision for multiple channels. However, most multi-hop deployments have used a single channel. A simple approach for utilizing all the available channels is to equip each host with one radio interface per channel, and stripe data in parallel over all the interfaces. However, in practice, it is very expensive to have one interface per channel. Under this realistic scenario of fewer interfaces per host than channels, several non-trivial challenges have to be addressed before all the channels can be utilized.

In this talk, I will first identify the impact of number of channels and interfaces on network capacity. Insights from the theoretical study will be used to motivate the need for new protocols for multi-channel networks. I will then present two protocols, a link layer protocol and a routing protocol, which are specifically designed to utilize multiple channels. I will also describe the implementation of the protocols on a linux-based testbed.  


Bio:
Pradeep Kyasanur is a Phd. candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Pradeep received a B.E from Mangalore University in 2001 and a M.S from UIUC in 2003. His research interests are in the area of wireless networking with emphasis on medium access control and routing problems. Pradeep is currently supported by a Vodafone Graduate Fellowship. More information about Pradeep's work is available at http://www.crhc.uiuc.edu/~kyasanur