Performance evaluation of routing protocols in wireless mesh network

Wireless mesh network has been considered as a viable solution to offer broadband connectivity to rural community due to its ability to provide extended coverage and scalable deployment. However, there are still impediments that need to be addressed in terms of throughput degradation, latency and interference due to multi hop transmission and potential isolated nodes. In this contribution, an investigation of suitable routing protocol in the context of providing rural broadband communication is presented by evaluating various of routing approaches, namely reactive, proactive and hybrid routing protocols. Specifically, performance analysis was simulated for ad hoc on demand distance vector (AODV), optimized link state routing (OLSR) and hybrid wireless mesh protocol (HWMP). The impacts of traffic loads, number of sources and the network size on wireless mesh network have been investigated through the simulation. HWMP has a clear advantage compare to AODV and OLSR in terms of maximizing throughput and minimizing end to end delay.