Wireless IEEE 802.11 networks in residences, small businesses,
and public “hot spots” typically encounter the wireline access link
(DSL, cable modem, T1, etc.) as the slowest and most expensive
part of the end-to-end path. Consequently, network architectures
have been proposed that employ multiple wireless hops in route to
and from the wired Internet. Unfortunately, use of current media
access and transport protocols for such systems can result in severe
unfairness and even starvation for flows that are an increasing number
of hops away from a wired Internet entry point. Our objective is
to study fairness and end-to-end performance in multihop wireless
backhaul networks via the following methodology. First, we develop
a formal reference model that characterizes objectives such
as removing spatial bias (i.e., providing performance that is independent
of the number of wireless hops to a wire) and maximizing
spatial reuse. Second, we perform an extensive set of simulation
experiments to quantify the impact of the key performance factors
towards achieving these goals. For example, we study the roles
of the MAC protocol, end-to-end congestion control, antenna technology,
and traffic types. Next, we develop and study a distributed
layer 2 fairness algorithm which targets to achieve the fairness of
the reference model without modification to TCP. Finally, we study
the critical relationship between fairness and aggregate throughput
and in particular study the fairness-constrained system capacity of
multihop wireless backhaul networks