  In this paper we design and implement a resource management scheme based on
cooperative association, where the STAs can share useful information in order
to improve the performance of the association/handoff procedures. The
cooperative association mechanism is inspired by the rapidly designed
cooperative protocols in the field of wireless networks. Furthermore, we
introduce a load balancing mechanism that operates in a cross-layer manner
taking into account uplink and downlink channel conditions, routing performance
and congestion control. The iterative heuristic algorithms that we propose,
control the communication load of each mesh AP in a distributed manner. We
evaluate the performance of our mechanisms through OPNET simulations and
testbed experiments.
