In a wireless mesh network (WMN) with a number of stationary wireless routers, the aggregate capacity can be increased when each router is equipped with multiple network interface cards (NICs) and each NIC within a router is assigned to a distinct orthogonal frequency channel. In this paper, given the logical topology of the network, we formulate the joint channel allocation, interface assignment, and media access control (MAC) problem as a cross-layer non-linear mixed-integer network utility maximization problem. An optimal joint design, based on exact binary linearization techniques, is proposed which leads to a global maximum. A near-optimal joint design, based on approximate dual decomposition techniques, is also proposed which is of more interest in terms of practical deployment. Performance evaluation is given through a number of numerical examples in terms of network utility maximization and aggregate network throughput.
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