Cross-Layer Aware Routing Protocol for Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks

—Route selection in hybrid wireless mesh networks (WMNs) that contain mobile mesh clients with constrained energy is a critical research challenge. Existing routing protocols take the advantages of backbone mesh routing protocols but lack of consideration of the characteristics of clients. Most of these protocols capture interference and traffic load, but lack of considering the effect of mobility and energy constraints of clients. In this paper, we propose a Cross-Layer Aware (CLA) routing protocol, which is based on comprehensively considering characteristics of mesh routers and mesh clients for gateway traffic in hybrid WMNs. In CLA, we propose a new routing metric jointly considering four parameters in a cross-layer design: the MAC layer channel condition, the routing layer path length, the application layer mobility and constrained energy of clients. These parameters can capture the interference, traffic load, stability and energy efficiency, so as to select an optimum route. In addition, we develop a constrained forwarding mechanism to reduce flooding overhead by limiting the forwarding number of clients in CLA, which can reduce the energy consumption wasted in overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed CLA protocol can effectively improve the whole network performance.