Load balancing with fair scheduling for multiclass priority traffic in wireless mesh networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are emerging as a key technology for providing cost effective, resilient and adaptive services for the next generation networks. WMNs provide a number of applications to end users such as Video on demand (VoD), Voice over IP (VoIP), high speed internet access, video conferencing etc. To provide Quality of Service (QoS) to these applications, load balancing and fair scheduling are important metrics. In this paper, we propose a novel strict priority based fair load balancing (SPFLB) algorithm for multi class priority traffic in WMNs. The available capacity (AC) and Load Index (LI) of the link is calculated and based upon these values cost evaluation function (CEF) is defined. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using simulations on ns-2 with respect to various metrics. The results obtained show that the proposed algorithm is quite effective for balancing the load of multiclass traffic flows.