E-AODV for Wireless Mesh Networks and Its Performance Evaluation

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) consist of static router backbone which provide connectivity and coverage to mobile clients. They can also be viewed as a special case of wireless multi-hop Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs). The IETF group as well as the IEEE 802.11s working group have recommended applicability of several existing MANETs routing protocols for WMNs. However, in WMNs, client to client communications are through parent gateway via static routers, while in MANETs every arbitrary node pairs can act as source or destination. Therefore, it is of practical importance to re-evaluate MANETs routing protocols and make suitable modifications so that the protocols perform efficiently in WMNs environment. In this paper, we propose E-AODV, which is a variant of traditional Ad-hoc On-demand Distant Vector (AODV) routing, a protocol developed for MANETs. To evaluate E-AODV's performance and suitability in WMNs, a comparison of the protocol with traditional AODV and M-OLSR (a modified OLSR for WMNs), is carried out.