1st Annual Conference on Broadband Networks

Research Article

A multi-radio unification protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/BROADNETS.2004.8,
        author={Atul Adya  and Paramvir Bahl and Jitendra Padhye and Alec Wolman and Lidong Zhou},
        title={A multi-radio unification protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks},
        proceedings={1st Annual Conference on Broadband Networks},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={BROADNETS},
        year={2004},
        month={12},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/BROADNETS.2004.8}
    }
    
  • Atul Adya
    Paramvir Bahl
    Jitendra Padhye
    Alec Wolman
    Lidong Zhou
    Year: 2004
    A multi-radio unification protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks
    BROADNETS
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/BROADNETS.2004.8
Atul Adya 1,*, Paramvir Bahl1,*, Jitendra Padhye1,*, Alec Wolman1,*, Lidong Zhou1,*
  • 1: Microsoft Research
*Contact email: adya@microsoft.com, bahl@microsoft.com, padhye@microsoft.com, alecw@microsoft.com, lidongz}@microsoft.com

Abstract

We present a link layer protocol called the multi-radio unification protocol or MUP. On a single node, MUP coordinates the operation of multiple wireless network cards tuned to non-overlapping frequency channels. The goal of MUP is to optimize local spectrum usage via intelligent channel selection in a multihop wireless network. MUP works with standard-compliant IEEE 802.11 hardware, does not require changes to applications or higher-level protocols, and can be deployed incrementally. The primary usage scenario for MUP is a multihop community wireless mesh network, where cost of the radios and battery consumption are not limiting factors. We describe the design and implementation of MUP, and analyze its performance using both simulations and measurements based on our implementation. Our results show that under dynamic traffic patterns with realistic topologies, MUP significantly improves both TCP throughput and user perceived latency for realistic workloads.