A New MPLS-Based Forwarding Paradigm for Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks

Routing in multi-radio wireless mesh networks is a very challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a forwarding paradigm based on MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) which makes use of a novel mechanism, denoted as MPLS splitting policy. Such mechanism allows to configure multiple next hops at an intermediate node, so that the incoming traffic is partitioned among the next hops according to predefined coefficients named split ratios. The MPLS splitting policy has been designed to allow for load balancing and fast local restoration. With such a mechanism, it is crucial to properly determine the set of split ratios, as they determine how the traffic is routed across the network. We present an approach to compute a set of split ratios that guarantee high performance under different traffic loads. To this end, we adopt the hose traffic model, according to which we only have knowledge of the maximum amount of traffic entering or leaving the network at each edge node. A thorough simulation study is conducted to show that our approach outperforms other routing protocols in terms of throughput and robustness against traffic load variations and single node failures.