Load distributed routing protocol for wireless mesh networks

This paper presents a routing protocol called Load Distributed Mesh Routing (LDMR) that is developed for Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) with IEEE 802.11 standard. The LDMR protocol decides on the potential next hop nodes based on a quadrant and distance information. Then, the Next Hop Forwarding (NHF) decision is used to select the best next hop nodes based on Packet Success Rate (PSR) and maximum velocity of a packet. The proposed LDMR protocol has been implemented and verified through simulation in Network Simulator 3 (NS3) for both randomly distributed and grid network topologies. The network performance of LDMR is compared with the existing routing protocols, which are Ad Hoc on Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol (HWMP). Simulation results show that the throughput of LDMR is improved when compared to HWMP and AODV in most of the simulated cases. The LDMR protocol also maintains a low average end-to-end delay which is lower than 0.01s in almost all cases when compared with AODV and HWMP protocols.