LABILE: Link quAlity-Based LexIcaL Routing MEtric for Reactive Routing Protocols in IEEE 802.15.4 Networks

In this paper, we propose a lexical routing metric to enable path-wise link quality-aware routing in wireless networks. The metric is motivated from the fact that IEEE 802.15.4 networks are formed on links with highly variable quality, and selection of poor quality links degrades the data delivery considerably. Although IEEE 802.15.4 supports link-level awareness through LQI, a) it remains unbeknownst at the path level and therefore b) its processing is link-local in scope. We propose LABILE, a composite routing metric that is implemented through modifying RREQ and RREP structures of AODV to a) capture and convey two-state link information to destination, which in turn is processed through lexicon-inspired parsing. Experiments done for LABILE show that proposed composite metric and its parsing scheme together achieve link robustness consistently. Increased data delivery is obtained through preventing retransmissions as on failures-prone links.