Routing Protocol for Heterogeneous Wireless Mesh Networks

The introduction of heterogeneous wireless mesh technologies provides an opportunity for higher network capacity, wider coverage, and higher quality of service (QoS). Each wireless device utilizes different standards, data formats, protocols, and access technologies. However, the diversity and complexity of such technologies create challenges for traditional control and management systems. This paper proposes a heterogeneous metropolitan area network architecture that combines an IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh network (WMN) with a long-term evolution (LTE) network. In addition, a new heterogeneous routing protocol and a routing algorithm based on reinforcement learning called cognitive heterogeneous routing are proposed to select the appropriate transmission technology based on parameters from each network. The proposed heterogeneous network overcomes the problems of sending packets over long paths, island nodes, and interference in WMNs and increases the overall capacity of the combined network by utilizing unlicensed frequency bands instead of buying more license frequency bands for LTE. The work is validated through extensive simulations that indicate that the proposed heterogeneous WMN outperforms the LTE and Wi-Fi networks when used individually. The simulation results show that the proposed network achieves an increase of up to 200% in throughput compared with Wi-Fi-only networks or LTE-only networks.