Multi-Hop Effective Bandwidth Based Routing in Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, we address the routing issue in a wireless mesh network, where each node is stationary and equipped with one or more radios. Specifically, we propose a new path metric called multi-hop effective bandwidth (MHEB), which provides a generic approach to calculate the achievable bandwidth along a path, taking the impacts of inter/intra-flow interference and space/channel diversity into account. We also present a new routing protocol based on the MHEB metric, which achieves interference-aware and load-balancing routing at the same time. Performance of the MHEB based routing in improving the network throughput is validated through computer simulations, compared with the existing popular routing metrics.