Comparison of routing metrics in 802.11n wireless mesh networks

Author

Sheshadri, Ramanujan K. ; Koutsonikolas, Dimitrios

Author_Institution

SUNY - Univ. at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

14-19 April 2013

Firstpage

1869

Lastpage

1877

Abstract

We conduct the first experimental study of the performance of link quality-based routing metrics in an 802.11n wireless mesh network (WMN). Link quality-based metrics have been shown to significantly outperform the traditional hopcount metric but they have only been evaluated over legacy 802.11a/b/g radios. The new 802.11n standard introduces a number of enhancements at the MAC and PHY layers (MIMO technology, channel bonding, frame aggregation, short guard interval, and more aggressive modulation and coding schemes) marking the beginning of a new generation of 802.11 radios. Our study in a 21-node indoor 802.11n WMN testbed reveals that the gains of link quality-based metrics over the hopcount metric in legacy 802.11 WMNs do not carry over in 802.11n MIMO WMNs. We analyze the causes of this behavior and make recommendations for the design of new routing metrics in 802.11n WMNs.

Keywords

MIMO communication; access protocols; modulation coding; telecommunication links; telecommunication network routing; wireless LAN; wireless mesh networks; IEEE 802.11n MIMO WMN; IEEE 802.11n wireless mesh networks; MAC; PHY layers; channel bonding; coding scheme; frame aggregation; hopcount metric; link quality-based routing metrics; modulation scheme; short guard interval; Barium; Bit rate; IEEE 802.11g Standard; IEEE 802.11n Standard; Routing; Throughput;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

INFOCOM, 2013 Proceedings IEEE

Conference_Location

Turin

ISSN

0743-166X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-5944-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/INFCOM.2013.6566986

Filename

6566986