A Metropolis Approach for Mesh Router Nodes placement in Rural Wireless Mesh Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Metropolis-based algorithm for optimally placing mesh router nodes in rural wireless networks, maximizing coverage and connectivity while minimizing the number of routers needed.

Contribution

It presents a novel algorithm tailored for rural regions that optimizes router placement considering coverage, optional areas, and network connectivity.

Findings

Achieved 94-97% coverage of required areas

Maintained optional area coverage below 16%

Used an optimal number of routers approximately 1.3 times the minimum required

Abstract

Wireless mesh networks appear as an appealing solution to reduce the digital divide between rural and urban regions. However the placement of router nodes is still a critical issue when planning this type of network, especially in rural regions where we usually observe low density and sparse population. In this paper, we firstly provide a network model tied to rural regions by considering the area to cover as decomposed into a set of elementary areas which can be required or optional in terms of coverage and where a node can be placed or not. Afterwards, we try to determine an optimal number and positions of mesh router nodes while maximizing the coverage of areas of interest, minimizing the coverage of optional areas and ensuring connectivity of all mesh router nodes. For that we propose a particularized algorithm based on Metropolis approach to ensure an optimal coverage and connectivity with an optimal number of routers. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on different region instances. We obtained a required coverage between 94% and 97% and a coverage percentage of optional areas less than 16% with an optimal number of routers nr_max2 =1.3*nr_min , (nr_min being the minimum number of router which is the ratio between the total area requiring coverage and the area which can be covered by a router).