A Location and Cluster-Based MAC and Routing Protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks

To solve performance degradation caused by the hidden and exposed terminal problems in medium access control (MAC) protocol and flooding problem in routing protocol for wireless mesh networks., this paper proposes a location and cluster-based MAC and routing protocol. All nodes are divided into different clusters based on connection time of communication links between neighbor nodes. According to the state and geographic location of nodes in each cluster., time slots are allocated by cluster head to eliminate the hidden and exposed terminal problems and achieve the conflict-free transmissions of data packets. In the routing protocol., each node selects nodes with the maximum forwarding distance as the next-hop node to reduce the number of hops per route. Therefore., each node can forward the data packets in the direction of the destination node to avoid the traditional flooding problem. Finally., simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms communication protocol composed of EDCA and HWMP protocol in terms of the end-to-end delay., packet delivery rate and throughput.