A radio load based load balancing scheme with admission control

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) where there exist multiple Internet gateways, performing load balancing among available gateways is vital in order to take full advantage of the network capacity and improve the performance. However, performing load balancing in a wireless environment is very challenging due to the inherently interfering and unreliable nature that characterize wireless communication. Additionally, the dynamic in ad hoc networks due to node mobility makes it even more difficult. This paper explores the feasibility of performing load balancing in ad hoc networks both in static and mobile topologies, and proposes the RLAC scheme, that jointly performs the task of load balancing and admission control. RLAC relies on radio load information provided by the underlying MAC-layer to make routing decisions. Simulations with RLAC on a considerable number of random topologies, both static and mobile, show that the proposed scheme has a potential to improve performance with respect to the aggregated throughput.