A Novel Link Quality Assessment Method for Mobile Multi-Rate Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Accurate and fast wireless link quality assessment (LQA) for wireless channels would bring huge benefits for mobile multi-hop and multi-rate wireless ad hoc and sensor networks in the form of improved end-to-end performance. In this paper, we propose a novel LQA method based on cross-layer information. The method is implemented in a real test-bed, which is based on IEEE 802.11b/g, and achieved a significant LQA improvement up to 50% in mobile scenarios without introducing overhead. The effectiveness of accurate and fast LQA is demonstrated by feeding it into the routing layer to enable the route decisions to adapt faster during changing situations, especially in mobile scenarios. The experiment results show that the proposed LQA method can lead to faster and smarter routing decisions and higher end-to-end throughput compared to traditional methods, which only use hello packets to determine the link quality in mobile scenario.