Multi-hop Available Bandwidth Estimation Based on General Link in Wireless Mesh Network1)

Available bandwidth is an important network performance metric, which can benefit a lot of network protocols and applications. Though many works have been done for the bandwidth estimation in wired network, it is still a challenge in wireless networks. In this paper, based on the shared medium nature of wireless networks, the concept of general link is introduced for the analysis and estimation of wireless path capacity and available bandwidth. The proposed method also combines both variable packet size and packet train approach. The simulation results show that the proposed method can estimate the available bandwidth successfully and efficiently.