Channel Assignment in Multi-Radio Wireless Networks Based on PSO Algorithm

The wireless mesh network is a new emerging technology exploiting the advantages of multiple radios and multiple channels. In this paper we have studied the channel assignment problem which is to assign channels to links in the network, and aimed at minimizing the network interference so as to improve the network throughput. The channel assignment problem is proved to be NP-hard. In this paper, we have developed a new approach based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and a heuristic algorithm to solve channel assignment problem in multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks. Meanwhile, the crossover operation is employed in the discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) algorithm to handle the discrete channel assignment problem. Experimental results have shown that the rate of interference in the DPSO algorithm descends by 67.67% compared with the Tabu-based algorithm when there are 12 channels and 5 radios. And the heuristic algorithm can also yield good solutions with good quality in both dense and sparse networks.