Design, analysis and evaluation of routing and channel assignment algorithms for wireless mesh networks

In this thesis we describe the efforts we made for designing, developing and analyzing new routing and channel assignment algorithms for wireless mesh networks. In particular we discuss about a new channel re-assignment scheme, able to minimize the number of changes required to accomodate new traffic demands, a new MPLS-based forwarding paradigm, resistant to failures and able to cope with variations of the traffic demands and, finally, a new forwarding paradigm able to exploit aggregation opportunities at the MAC layer. Before going into the details of these new algorithms, we introduce some of the networking testbeds, platforms and tools we have leveraged for their evaluation. We also describe a contribution we have made in the field of heterougeneous networking testbeds, in particular regarding the integration of local wireless mesh testbeds in PlanetLab.