MeshChord: A Location-Aware, Cross-Layer Specialization of Chord for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are a promising area for the deployment of new wireless communication and networking technologies. In this paper, we address the problem of enabling effective peer-to-peer resource sharing in this type of networks. Starting from the well-known Chord protocol for resource sharing in wired networks, we propose a specialization (called MESHCHORD) that accounts for peculiar features of wireless mesh networks: namely, the availability of a wireless infrastructure, and the 1-hop broadcast nature of wireless communication. Through extensive packet-level simulations, we show that MESHCHORD reduces message overhead of as much as 40% with respect to the basic Chord design, while at the same time improving the information retrieval performance. Overall, the results of our study suggest that MESHCHORD can be successfully utilized for implementing file/resource sharing applications in wireless mesh networks.