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

Wireless mesh networks are a promising area for the deploymentof new wireless communication and networkingtechnologies. In this paper, we address the problem of enablingeffective peer-to-peer resource sharing in this type ofnetworks. Starting from the well-known Chord protocol forresource sharing in wired networks, we propose a specialization(called MESHCHORD) that accounts for peculiarfeatures of wireless mesh networks: namely, the availabilityof a wireless infrastructure, and the 1-hop broadcast natureof wireless communication. Through extensive packet-levelsimulations, we show that MESHCHORD reduces messageoverhead of as much as 40% with respect to the basic Chorddesign, while at the same time improving the informationretrieval performance.