Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a promising wireless technology in providing high-bandwidth Internet access over a specific coverage area, with relative lower investment cost as compared to traditional access network. In a WMN, a mobile client (MC) can access the Internet through a wireless backbone formed by wireless Mesh Routers (MRs) which are interconnected in a multi-hop fashion while some MRs known as Internet Gateways (IGWs) act as the communication bridges between the wireless backbone and the Internet. The design of the network architecture is a fundamental issue for a WMN and is critical in determining the network performance and providing Quality of Service (QoS) for end users, and thus should be addressed carefully.
A unique characteristic of a WMN is the IGW oriented Internet traffic. Thus, the deployment of IGW is the key problem in the network design, and is investigated in this dissertation. Two IGW oriented network architecture are analyzed, and corresponding QoS requirements and constraints are evaluated. The IGW deployment problem is then formulated as a multiple objectives optimization problem. Besides the linear program approach, some heuristic algorithms are proposed and evaluated. Extensive simulations show the effectiveness of proposed solutions.
To improve the performance of a given WMN, load balancing between different IGW domains is also investigated. A fairness between IGWs domains improves the network performance and provides a better QoS for end users. The fairness index is defined for both homogenous and heterogeneous WMNs. A distributed load balancing scheme is proposed, and three load balancing algorithms based on diffusion methodology are introduced in the proposed scheme.
Authenticated key establishment (AKE) schemes enable two entities (e.g., a client and a server) to share common communication keys in an authentic way. Due to mobility of mesh clients (MCs), a WMN needs have a fast and efficient authentication and key establishment scheme to provide adequate security in client's handoff while meeting the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. In this dissertation, we discuss the authentication performance requirements imposed by the unique WMN characteristics. Distributed authenticated key establishment schemes are proposed based on hierarchical multi-variable symmetric functions (HMSF) and identity-based cryptography (IBC) respectively, which enable fast key agreement and mutual authentication between network entities in a WMN. In the distributed authenticated key establishment scheme, network entities in a WMN such as MCs and mesh access points (e.g. mesh routers) can authenticate each other and establish pairwise communication keys without any interaction from a centralized authentication center, while substantially reducing the communication overhead and the authentication delay.