Adaptive routing with intelligent portal in wireless mesh networks

Abstract

Mesh networks, motivated by wireless neighborhood networks are composed of static wireless nodes that have ample energy supply. Each of these wireless nodes can be equipped with multiple radios, called a multiradio/multichannel node, and each of the radios can be configured to a different channel to enhance network capacity. All wireless nodes cooperatively route each otherpsilas traffic to the Internet through one or more Internet Transit Access Points (TAPS), which are gateways to the Internet. Nodes may also communicate with each other directly through the mesh network without going through TAPS. Supporting communication among mesh nodes and TAPS requires the use of routing protocols that must be combined with a routing metric to determine which route among all possible routes between a pair of nodes will be used. The design of effective routing metrics, however, depends on the specific characteristics of the target network. For example, the severe energy constraints of sensor networks demand the design of energy efficient routing, while the mobility of nodes in ad hoc networks demand the design of protocols that can efficiently maintain connectivity. The unique combination of static nodes with the shared nature of the wireless medium in mesh networks also imposes specific requirements for the design of routing metrics. In this paper it was analyzed the proposed IPRA (Intelligent Portal Routing Algorithm) protocol and its performances in comparison with those offered by the AODV (Ad-hoc on Demand Vector) and DSDV (Destination Sequence Distance Vector) protocols.