HOVER: hybrid on-demand distance vector routing for wireless mesh networks

Abstract

Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks are a combination of mobile ad hoc networks and infrastructure wireless mesh networks, consisting of two types of nodes: mobile Mesh Clients and static Mesh Routers. Mesh Routers, which are typically equipped with multiple radios, provide a wireless multi-hop backhaul. The resource constrained Mesh Clients also participate in the routing and forwarding of packets to extend the reach of the network. Current ad-hoc routing protocols have been designed for relatively homogeneous networks and do not perform well in Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks. In this paper, we present HOVER (Hybrid On-demand Distance Vector Routing), a modified version of the AODV routing protocol, that achieves significant performance improvements in terms of packet delivery and latency in Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks. Our modifications include a link quality estimation technique based on HELLO packets, a new routing metric that differentiates between node types, and a channel selection scheme that minimises interference in multi-radio mesh networks. We present an evaluation of our improvements via extensive simulations. We further show the practicality of the protocol through prototype implementation and provide measurement results obtained from our test-bed.