MR-OLSR: A link state routing algorithm in multi-radio/multi-channel Wireless Mesh Networks

In order to improve throughput and perform load balancing, many routing algorithms in WMNs (Wireless Mesh Networks) have been applied to take full advantages of multi-radio, multi-channel and multi-path of WMNs. Even though a lot of proposals have already shown their merits like LQSR, MR-LQSR etc., up to now, few schemes could universally achieve all of these objectives. In this paper, we present MR-OLSR, an optimized link state routing algorithm in multi-radio/multi-channel WMNs. It was improved by OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) protocol in MANET. It can distribute data traffic among diverse multiple paths to avoid congestion, and improve channel throughput substantially. It uses the novel metric named IWCETT (Improved Weighted Culminated Estimate Transfer Time) to evaluate path quality. Besides, the proposed channel allocation strategy and path scheduling algorithm offer it the ability of loading balance. MR-OLSR is experimented in OPNET simulation environment, and the results prove that our proposal not merely maintains the merits of robustness and scalability in OLSR scheme. What´s more, the proposal enhances the stability and reliability in the situation of links failing, and keeps the promise of increasing network throughput apparently.