Routing in Self-organized Wireless Networks
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Contents |
Description
Motivation
In the context of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), scalability requirements, heterogeneity, and (sometimes) uncontrolled deployment require the introduction of self-organization. The design of a routing protocol that really exploits the specific features of a Self-organized Wireless Mesh Network remains a challenge. The static and non-power constrained nature of potential backbone nodes allows offering some exploitable features towards this goal, such as multi-radio and multi-channel support, static backbone nodes, and increased CPU and storage capabilities. The expected additional benefit, with respect to those that do not or cannot exploit them, is an increase in overall throughput supported by the network. By contrast, the main design goal of routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) is end-to-end connectivity maintenance. In MANETs, transmitting a packet has a high cost due to node energy constraints. Therefore, at the routing level, research is mainly focused on designing low control overhead routing techniques to deal with frequent route breaks due to mobility or node failures. This is not exactly the case in WMNs.
Goal
We are interested in studying the fundamental behavior guiding the performance of WMNs (e.g., interference) in order to understand how a routing protocol should be designed, always bearing in mind the distinguishing features of WMNs. The ultimate goal is to design and implement practical routing protocols for WMNs in order to extend the reach of Internet network connections in real scenarios (e.g., hotels, community neighborhood, marina...) and to evaluate the feasibility of all-wireless networks.
State-of-the-art
The distinguishing features of WMNs have a strong impact on the design of the routing scheme. We have categorized routing protocols that benefit from such features depending on which one is exploited (see Figure 1).
Evaluation methodology
Given the practical orientation of this task, our research is closely linked to research carried out in the group on Network Measurements. Experimental evaluation of the proposed solutions are carried out in the WMN extension of the EXTREME Testbed. Furthermore, we are also extending the features of NS-3.
Publications
J. Nuñez-Martínez, J. Mangues. A Survey on Routing Protocols that really exploit Wireless Mesh Networks. To be published in Academy Publisher Journal of Communications.
