A Routing Protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper we propose and develop a new simple routing protocol for wireless mesh network. This protocol, called multipath parallel routing protocol MPRP, is a reactive, distance vector routing protocol. It uses a simple mechanism to build multiple paths for a couple of nodes source and destination. These multiple paths are used in a parallel fashion. Multiple paths are not necessarily disjoint but they are loop-free. Moreover, we implemented the coordinated distributed scheme (CDS) of the Std. IEEE 802.16. We used a well-known simulation tool, NS2 in order to compare performance of the multipath protocol and the ad hoc on demand distance vector routing protocol (AODV), both running over the MAC layer in which is incorporated the CDS scheme. Simulation results show as multiple paths used in a parallel fashion permit better results in terms of throughput and delay to be obtained.