A web interface for WMN-PSODGA hybrid intelligent simulation system: performance evaluation for different mesh client distributions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to implement a web interface for a hybrid intelligent system. By using the implemented web interface, one can find optimal assignments of mesh routers in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). This study evaluates the implemented system considering three distributions of mesh clients to solve the node placement problem in WMNs. Design/methodology/approach The node placement problem in WMNs is well known to be a computationally hard problem. Therefore, intelligent algorithms are used for solving this problem. The implemented system is a hybrid intelligent system based on meta-heuristics algorithms: particle swarm optimization (PSO) and distributed genetic algorithm (DGA). The proposed system is called WMN-PSODGA. Findings This study carried out simulations using the implemented simulation system. From the simulations results, it was found that the WMN-PSODGA system performs better for chi-square distribution of mesh clients compared with Weibull and exponential distributions. Research limitations/implications For simulations, three different distributions of mesh clients were considered. In the future, other mesh client distributions, number of mesh nodes and communication distance need to be considered. Originality/value This research work, different from other research works, implemented a hybrid intelligent simulation system for WMNs. This study also implemented a web interface for the proposed system, which make the simulation system user-friendly.

A comparison study of chi-square and uniform distributions of mesh clients for different router replacement methods using WMN-PSODGA hybrid intelligent simulation system

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are gaining a lot of attention from researchers due to their advantages such as easy maintenance, low upfront cost and high robustness. Connectivity and stability directly affect the performance of WMNs. However, WMNs have some problems such as node placement problem, hidden terminal problem and so on. In our previous work, we implemented a simulation system to solve the node placement problem in WMNs considering Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Distributed Genetic Algorithm (DGA), called WMN-PSODGA. In this paper, we compare chi-square and uniform distributions of mesh clients for different router replacement methods. The router replacement methods considered are Constriction Method (CM), Random Inertia Weight Method (RIWM), Linearly Decreasing Inertia Weight Method (LDIWM), Linearly Decreasing Vmax Method (LDVM) and Rational Decrement of Vmax Method (RDVM). The simulation results show that for chi-square distribution the mesh routers cover all mesh clients for all router replacement methods. In terms of load balancing, the method that achieves the best performance is RDVM. When using the uniform distribution, the mesh routers do not cover all mesh clients, but this distribution shows good load balancing for four router replacement methods, with RIWM showing the best performance. The only method that shows poor performance for this distribution is LDIWM. However, since not all mesh clients are covered when using uniform distribution, the best scenario is chi-square distribution of mesh clients with RDVM as a router replacement method.

Fairness-Oriented Semichaotic Genetic Algorithm-Based Channel Assignment Technique for Node Starvation Problem in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a scalable, reliable, and agile wireless network that supports many types of innovative technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), and Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Due to the limited number of orthogonal channels, interference between channels adversely affects the fair distribution of bandwidth among mesh clients, causing node starvation in terms of insufficient bandwidth distribution, which impedes the adoption of WMN as an efficient access technology. Therefore, a fair channel assignment is crucial for the mesh clients to utilize the available resources. However, the node starvation problem due to unfair channel distribution has been vastly overlooked during channel assignment by the extant research. Instead, existing channel assignment algorithms equally distribute the interference reduction on the links to achieve fairness which neither guarantees a fair distribution of the network bandwidth nor eliminates node starvation. In addition, the metaheuristic-based solutions such as genetic algorithm, which is commonly used for WMN, use randomness in creating initial population and selecting the new generation usually leading the search to local minima. To this end, this study proposes a Fairness-Oriented Semichaotic Genetic Algorithm-Based Channel Assignment Technique (FA-SCGA-CAA) to solve node starvation problem in wireless mesh networks. FA-SCGA-CAA maximizes link fairness while minimizing link interference using a genetic algorithm (GA) with a novel nonlinear fairness-oriented fitness function. The primary chromosome with powerful genes is created based on multicriterion links ranking channel assignment algorithm. Such a chromosome was used with a proposed semichaotic technique to create a strong population that directs the search towards the global minima effectively and efficiently. The proposed semichaotic technique was also used during the mutation and parent selection of the new genes. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed algorithm. A comparison with related work shows that the proposed FA-SCGA-CAA reduced the potential node starvation by 22% and improved network capacity utilization by 23%. It can be concluded that the proposed FA-SCGA-CAA is reliable to maintain high node-level fairness while maximizing the utilization of the network resources, which is the ultimate goal of many wireless networks.