Congestion based routing metric and channel assignment scheme for WMN

Routing is the soul of wireless communication. It is the process through which best available path between the source and the destination nodes is identified. This selection procedure is carried out with the help of measurements that address various issues of the network. Such measurements are called as routing metrics. Routing metrics are in the course of evolution addressing the issues such as path length, transmission failures, interference, congestion etc. Considering the fact that maintenance of connectivity in multi-hop wireless networks is important and congestion in the network should not be a hindrance, we propose a congestion aware medium access based routing metric, Request To Send (RTS)-Clear To Send (CTS) Retransmission count (RCR) for Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN). The metric considers RTS-CTS handshake of Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) method. It is incorporated in Multi-radio Multi-channel (MRMC) WMN for its wide usage. The channel assignment (CA) scheme utilized is cluster based with Latin matrix allocation strategy for MRMC WMN. The metric and the CA scheme are simulated in the network simulator NS3. The results depict a comparably better performance by RCR and Cluster based Channel and Backoff Assignment Scheme (CCBAS) than the Airtime link cost metric and conventional CA strategy respectively of WMN.