Power Control for Wireless Mesh Networks

This project analyzes the effect that sophisticated power control mechanism might have on total throughput of wireless networks. Contrary to the popular belief, the project's main conclusion, based on theoretical and experimental studies, is that for any two sender topology the best strategy is either for the stations to send one at a time, or for them to send concurrently at the maximum power level of which they are capable and that there is no use of any adaptive power control mechanisms. The analysis derives the general expression for the transmit power that maximizes the throughput for the two-sender physical topologies. This expression is found to correspond to the cases where one node transmits or both the nodes transmit at a time with maximum transmission power. The project goes on to present measurements from an 802.11 test-bed for the two-sender topology, in order to see if the conclusions from the theoretical analysis hold in practice. Tools Used: Click Modular Router, Python, MATLAB.