IOBR: Interoperable bee-hive routing in a heterogeneous multi-radio network

WiMAX and WiFi are the two proliferating wireless technologies with different physical and Media Access Control (MAC) layers. Today, WiFi radio is present in almost all the devices, and most of the devices are equipped with WiMAX radio. Both these technologies can be utilized, if the devices are equipped with both of them, to improve the performance. To cope up with the scenario, a method for routing in a heterogeneous infrastructure based mesh network is proposed. The heterogeneous network consists of a coordinator node and a subscriber node. In this paper, we assume that the coordinator nodes are equipped with both WiMAX and WiFi radios, whereas, the subscriber nodes need not have WiMAX radio. The protocol used for routing data is based on the bee-hive algorithm, in which the entire network is divided into foraging zones/regions. We propose a technique in which the intra-foraging zone communication happens through WiFi and the nodes across the foraging zone communicate via the coordinator using WiMAX. It is observed through simulations that our technique improves the overall network performance by making use of both the radios efficiently.