A Layered Routing Architecture for Infrastructure Wireless Mesh Networks

Due to architectural similarities, routing protocols designed for ad hoc networks have been applied to wireless mesh networks (WMNs). However, such routing protocols do not scale well in WMNs, requiring considerable research efforts for enhancing them. In order to scale up WMNs, this paper introduces a three-layered routing architecture designed for infrastructure WMNs, which explores a hybrid routing approach to reduce signaling overhead, power consumption and delay. The main strengths and innovations of the proposed architecture are the separation of routing concerns in three independent layers and the differentiation of routing strategies for static and mobile nodes.