A cross‐layer design for heterogeneous routing in wireless mesh networks

Abstract

PurposeWireless mesh networks (WMNs) are regarded as a milestone in developing next‐generation wireless networks. The multi‐hop architecture of WMN makes it very attractive. However, interoperability is an inherent problem for deploying a large‐scale WMN, which may consist of various types of wireless networks. There are two intuitive approaches to solving the interoperability problem: the dual‐stack/multi‐stack approach and the naive layer‐2 broadcast approach. While the former incurs high cost in all devices, the latter creates broadcast storm in the whole network. This paper aims to propose a cross‐layer heterogeneous routing protocol for solving this problem without the adverse effects of the intuitive approaches.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual discussion and approach are employed.FindingsThe simulation results validate the efficiency of the proposed protocol.Originality/valueThe paper provides details of a method for routing selection in WMNs.