Optimization Models for the Radio Planning of Wireless Mesh Networks

The classical approach of radio planning in wireless access networks is often tailored as a set covering problem. Such approach is no longer suited for Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), where, beside the problem of covering clients, also the wireless network topology must be planned and the traffic must be routed on wireless links towards mesh access points. In this paper we propose novel optimization models for the planning of WMNs whose objective is to minimize the network installation cost, while providing full coverage to wireless mesh clients. Our mixed integer linear programming models aim at selecting the number and positions of mesh routers and access points, while taking into account in an accurate way traffic routing, interference, rate adaptation, and channel assignment. We provide the optimal solutions of the proposed problem formulations on a set of realistic-size instances and discuss the effect of different parameters on the characteristics of the planned networks.