A performance evaluation of multiple MDRUs based wireless mesh networks

Since communications services become much more demanded after disaster strikes, it is necessary to promptly set up a temporary communications infrastructure to provide services to those in need. The Movable and Deployable Resource Unit (MDRU) based Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is an attractive candidate to achieving this goal. In MDRU based WMN, the MDRU is transported to the disaster affected area by either ground or air transportation like truck or helicopter. After arriving at the disaster area, it configures any remaining wireless Access Points (AP) in the area to provide connectivity services. This work provides an insight on the performance of MDRU based WMN under the situation where multiple MDRUs are deployed within close region to increase the overall coverage and performance of the network. A simulation is conducted to estimate the performance of the network under both scenarios where mesh tier operates under a single channel and where a channel assignment scheme is applied. We show that the performance of MDRU based WMN can be greatly enhanced by deploying multiple MDRUs to the area. However, since the number of available MDRUs is limited, using more MDRUs than necessary is not efficient. We discuss some of the factors that should be taken into account when selecting an appropriate number of MDRUs for a single area.