A Hybrid Routing Protocol and Performance Evaluation in a Wireless Mesh Network

Abstract

The size of mesh networks depends upon the usage scenario so that the use of any single routing algorithm alone, either proactive or reactive, may not work efficiently. This letter proposes a hybrid routing algorithm, where a different algorithm is applied depending on the hop count between source and destination nodes. The algorithm allows using a proactive algorithm when a destination is nearby and a reactive algorithm when a destination is away from a source node. In this letter, we adopt the Destination Sequenced Distance Vector routing protocol (DSDV) for a nearby destination and the Ad hoc On-Demand Vector routing protocol (AODV) for a remote destination. A node maintains only a shared routing table for routing protocols, which helps reducing the size of the routing table at a node within a mesh network. Its routing performance is compared to those in DSDV and AODV in terms of normalized routing load, average packet transmission delay, and the average number of entries in the routing table.