Multi-channel WiMAX Mesh networking and its practice in sea

WiMAX Mesh networking is of many advantages for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications. In long-hop-distance ITS networks, multi-channel transmission may alleviate problem of insufficiency of bandwidth when a network uses single frequency channel. This paper presents algorithm of multi-channel bandwidth allocation in WiMAX mesh networks. Simulation is carried out with a maritime simulator, by which performance of multi-channel WiMAX mesh transmission is evaluated for high-speed ship-to-ship/shore communications in sea. Simulated results show that with multi-channel operations, in terms of packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end delay, the network performance is improved, in both sea state 3.0 and 6.0. In more rough sea and with more heavy traffic load, the improvement is observed clearer.