A Hop-by-Hop Multipath Routing Protocol Using Residual Bandwidth for Wireless Mesh Networks

In wireless mesh networks, there are mesh routers which can compose a wireless backbone with low mobility. We propose a hop-by-hop multipath routing scheme which is suitable for mesh routers offering network reliability with route redundancy. We extend DSDV in order to have multiple next hops to all nodes in the network without additional overheads. The basic idea of our scheme is to make several paths between the source and destination by selecting a proper next hop at every forwarding data. We choose a mesh router with the highest residual bandwidth as a next hop among multiple ones. Through periodic one hop broadcasting, not only we can get residual bandwidth information but also we can detect route failures fast and reduce the number of routing overhead packets. Through simulation, we represent that our scheme is more efficient than DSDV in delivering data to the destination when traffic is heavy, reducing overhead packets in the network, and preventing data loss when the route failure occurs. Keyword: Wireless mesh networks, Routing, Proactive routing, Hop-by-Hop multipath, Residual bandwidth