Cross-Layer Dynamic Source Routing Protocol with Load Balancing in Wireless Mesh Networks

To avoid congestion caused by some nodes overloaded and mesh points (MPs) becoming bottleneck in wireless mesh networks (WMNs), this paper proposed a new routing protocol called CLDSR-LB (cross-layer dynamic source routing protocol with load balancing). In order to avoid nodes overloaded, CLDSR-LB utilizes the idea of multi-metric and cross-layer and selects an optimal route by estimating the residual available bandwidth and load (data size in buffer) of the node in MAC layer. To achieve load balancing among MPs, neighbor MP is used to share the traffic if the current one is overloaded when accessing Internet. CLDSR-LB is simulated and compared with DSR via OPNET. Simulation results show that CLDSR-LB can achieve load balancing and improve throughput without significantly increasing network overhead.