An efficient on-demand routing approach with directional flooding for wireless mesh networks

Current on-demand ad-hoc routing protocols are not appropriate for wireless mesh networks (WMNs), because flooding-based route discovery is both redundant and expensive in terms of control message overhead. In this paper, we propose an efficient on-demand routing approach with directional flooding (DF), which is suitable for the WMNs with limited mobility. In the route discovery process to reach a gateway, our DF scheme can reduce the number of route request (RREQ) packets broadcast by using a restricted directional flooding technique. Simulation results show that ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) with DF (AODV-DF) can significantly reduce routing overhead by RREQ packets and enhance overall performance compared with the original AODV.