Conclusion
In this work two new protocols have been proposed to allocate network resources in mobile wireless mesh networks. The aim of the protocols is to guarantee a certain fairness to the system, while limiting the loss in global network capacity, that necessarily occurs when trying to solve the fairness issue. They can be con- sidered a synthesis between opportunistic transmission, which provides relatively high capacity to the system, and the new concept of Time-Space Volumes, that, together with cooperative communication, enhances system fairness.
A possible way to implement the two protocols in a distributed way has been proposed, in order to make them suitable for an application in MANETS.
We carried out a theoretical analysis on network capacity for a simplified sce- nario, that has been used to validate numerical results obtained in simulations.
A Matlab simulator has been developed in order to test protocols performances and to compare them to two preexisting schedulers.
Numerical results show that both protocols enhance performances of the al- ready existent round robin scheduler both in terms of capacity and fairness. Fair- ness is obviously enhanced also with respect to the purely opportunistic scheduler.
Simulations results also show that the loss in capacity with respect to opportunistic scheduling is smaller in both proposed protocols than in the round robin scheduler.
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PV and NV protocols have shown to have different characteristics in terms of performances. This difference can be exploited in accordance with system re- quirements and with the scenario they are applied to.
It is worth noting how local application of relatively simple rules in the two protocols, has brought to consistent advantages at macroscopical level. Through- out the exposition we tried to explain the mechanism behind this behavior. We started with intuitive and qualitative considerations, that have been subsequently borne out through analytical and simulation results.
Future work could be carried out in order to have a more objective evalua- tion, and perhaps an enhancement, of protocols performances through the use of appropriate mathematical analysis tools such as Game Theory.
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