INTERFERENCE AWARE ROUTING METRIC DESIGN FOR WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Networks are a special case of multi-hop wireless networks that is newlinegaining popularity in recent years. Wireless mesh networks are a special type of Ad Hoc newlineNetworks in the sense that the nodes in the backhaul are minimally mobile or stationary. newlineRouting protocols are needed for efficient delivery of information from one node to another in newlinea wireless network. Designing of routing metric for Wireless Mesh Networks is an active newlineresearch area and routing metrics are designed to account for scalability, load balancing, newlineinterference awareness etc. newlineRouting metric is nothing but the path selection criterion. Avoidance of congestion at newlinenodes, high throughput, low levels of interference, isotonicity, efficient utilization of channel newlinecapacity and minimal transmission delay are some of the desired characteristics of a good newlinerouting metric for Wireless Mesh Networks. newlineHop count is the widely used routing metric in most of the routing protocols namely newlineAODV, DSR, DSDV and others. Selecting the shortest path between two nodes in a WMN is newlinea good choice only if every wireless link in the network has exactly the same characteristics. newlineBut the characteristics of wireless links differ and hence the need to exploit the link newlinecharacteristic to aid in routing decision became essential and hence the need to propose new newlinemetrics that addresses the channel capacity gained attention. newlineInterference is a major performance degradation phenomenon in wireless networks. newlineHence addressing wireless channel interference gained importance in choosing the set of links newlinethat make up the route to transport packets from source to destination. newlineIn this research, as a first contribution, an interference aware routing metric for has newlinebeen proposed for Wireless Mesh Networks. It is proposed to route the data packets over links newlinethat has more available bandwidth and less delay. Choosing links with such a criteria enables newlinedata to be transported across links that suffer less due to interference. newline