Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have gained considerable popularity in very less time because of their self-healing, self-organizing, and self-configuring nature. WMNs are considered to be favorable for applications like broadband home networking, community networks, enterprise networking, metropolitan area networks, transportation systems, building automation, and security surveillance systems. WMNs are destined to provide high throughput and minimum packet delay and for these purposes multiple channels are used. Channel assignment, load balancing, and interference avoidance are some of the main challenges of multi-channel WMNs.

Main purpose of this research is to enhance the overall throughput of the network and minimize packet loss and delay. To do so, we propose routing and channel assignment schemes, which use node’s level information for node association and level assignment. Both the schemes work together and they are designed to minimize interference and balance the load among nodes. Performance of the proposed schemes is checked on the basis of varying offered load, different number of nodes, and different number of gateways. Simulation results show enhanced throughput with high packet delivery ratio, and minimal packet loss and delay as compared to existing schemes.