Load-Sensitive Routing with Directional Antennas

We present a load-sensitive routing (LSR) protocol for static wireless ad hoc networks using directional antennas. This protocol uses the aggregate queue size of all nodes in a path as the load metric for choosing routes. We compare the performance of the load metric with the commonly used hop count metric using directional antennas under different traffic conditions and in different topologies. Data delivery-ratio, end-to-end delay, and throughput are used as the performance metrics to compare the two routing metrics. The load metric performs better than the hop count metric from low to medium traffic rates. At high traffic rates, the performance of both metrics degrade considerably. LSR improves the delivery ratio up to 12%, reduces the end-to-end delay by 250%, and increases the throughput up to 28%