Secondary Wireless Mesh Network Design Using Leased Frequency Spectra

Abstract

<p>This thesis considers the design of secondary wireless mesh networks which use leased frequency channels. Considering the growing interest in using wireless services and the scarcity of frequency bands with proper propagation characteristics, reusing the currently licensed and underutilized bands is promising. A new initiative by the FCC, which allows the secondary usage of TV bands has encouraged both academia and industry to develop new devices and standards suitable for these operations.</p> <p>This thesis considers the design of secondary wireless mesh networks which use leased frequency channels. In a given geographic region the available channels are individually priced and leased exclusively. The usage of each channel is also subject to published interference constraints so that the primary user is not adversely affected. When the network is designed and deployed, the secondary user would like to minimize the costs of using the required resources while satisfying its own traffic and interference requirements. This problem is formulated as a mixed integer optimization which gives the optimum deployment cost as a function of the secondary node positioning, routing, and frequency allocations. Because of the problem's complexity, the optimum result can only be found for small problem sizes. To accommodate more practical deployments, four algorithms are proposed and their performance is compared to solutions obtained from the optimization.</p>