The Impact of the Choice of Metrics for Routing With a Focus on Wireless Mesh Networking (WMN)

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are going to change fundamentally how communication systems will work in the near future. However, a number of open questions need to be addressed to make this advance possible. This thesis delves into one of these questions: What routing metrics should be used for WMNs in which situation; and how? In this thesis, we investigate the basic mathematical properties and definitions of routing metrics. One element of this analysis is constituted by a taxonomy for the classification of metrics. This taxonomy includes five different aspects: The factors that have an impact on the metric, the mathematical properties, the design perspective, the implementation characteristics, and a qualitative evaluation. Using this scheme, 61 routing metrics are studied in this thesis. Condensing our findings, we propose two metrics: The first metric is suited for energyrestricted networks consists of the energy that is consumed per packet transfer, the remaining battery charge in the involved nodes and the packet loss ratio. The other metric is designed for finding routes with maximal bandwidth and combines the nominal bandwidth with packet loss ratio, as well. Furthermore, we propose and analyse several methods for integrating additive, multiplicative and concave routing metrics into Field-Based Routing (FBR) algorithms. In Addition, we present a software tool that allows to simulate field construction and route selection functions for various FBR algorithms.