Gateway Zone Multi-path Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Internet and multimedia services are widely-provided in All-IP based networks. There has been growing demand for mobile users to get those services. The Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) extends communication range and provides Internet connectivity to mobile users with low upfront investment. In WMN, the traffic usually passes through the gateway and makes it become the common destination of the traffic. Conventional multipath routing protocols in the ad hoc networks do not allow intermediate nodes to reply the route request messages, so the flooding messages make the area near the gateway become congested and degrade the performance. In this paper, we proposed Gateway Zone Multi-path Routing (GZMR) protocol. GZMR uses nodes around the gateway to form a Gateway Cooperative Zone and ceases the routing control messages flooding from outside the zone. Border nodes in the zone can help replying gateway information to reduce route discovery delay. Our simulation results show that by lowering routing overheads and utilizing multiple paths from source to gateway, GZMR can shorten average end-to-end delay and improve the packet delivery in WMNs.