Multiple metrics-OLSR in NAN for Advanced Metering Infrastructures

Routing in Neighbourhood Area Network (NAN) for Smart Grid's Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) raises the need for Quality of Service (QoS)-Aware routing. This is due to the expanded list of applications that will result in the transmission of different types of traffic between NAN devices (i.e smart meters). In wireless mesh network (WMN) routing, a combination of multiple link metrics, though complex, has been identified as a possible solution for QoS routing. These complexities (i.e Np complete problem) can be resolved through the use of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) algorithm and pruning techniques. With the assumption that smart meters transmit IP packets of different sizes at different interval to represent AMI traffic, a case study of the performance of three Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR) link metrics is carried out on a grid topology NAN based WMN in ns-2 network simulator. The best two performing metric were used to show the possibility of combining multiple metrics with OLSR through the AHP algorithm to fulfill the QoS routing requirements of targeted AMI application traffic in NANs.