Designing Routing Metrics for Mesh Networks

Designing routing metrics is critical for performance in wireless mesh networks. The unique characteristics of mesh networks, such as static nodes and the shared nature of the wireless medium, invalidate existing solutions from both wired and wireless networks and impose unique requirements on designing routing metrics for mesh networks. In this paper, we focus on identifying these requirements. We first analyze the possible types of routing protocols that can be used and show that proactive hop-by-hop routing protocols are the most appropriate for mesh networks. Then, we examine the requirements for designing routing metrics according to the characteristics of mesh networks and the type of routing protocols used. Finally, we study several existing routing metrics, including hop count, ETX, ETT, WCETT and MIC in terms of their ability to satisfy these requirements. Our simulation results of the performance of these metrics confirm our analysis of these metrics.