An Experimental Study of Routing Metrics in 802.11n Wireless Mesh Networks

Author

Sheshadri, Ramanujan K. ; Koutsonikolas, Dimitrios

Author_Institution

Comput. Sci. & Eng. Dept., SUNY - Univ. at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

Volume

13

Issue

12

fYear

2014

fDate

Dec. 2014

Firstpage

2719

Lastpage

2733

Abstract

In the recent past, link quality-based routing metrics, such as ETX and ETT, have been shown to significantly outperform the traditional hopcount metric in legacy 802.11a/b/g wireless mesh networks (WMNs). The new 802.11n standard introduces a number of enhancements at the MAC/PHY layers (MIMO technology, channel bonding, frame aggregation, and more aggressive modulation and coding schemes) marking the beginning of a new generation of 802.11 radios. In this paper, we conduct one of the first experimental studies of the performance of link quality-based routing metrics in a 21-node indoor 802.11n WMN. Our study 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; telecommunication network routing; wireless LAN; wireless channels; wireless mesh networks; 802.11n wireless mesh networks; ETT; ETX; MAC/PHY layers; MIMO WMN; MIMO technology; channel bonding; experimental study; frame aggregation; hopcount metric; link quality based routing metrics; Bit rate; IEEE 802.11g Standard; IEEE 802.11n Standard; MIMO; Routing protocols; Throughput; Wireless mesh networks; 802.11n; Wireless mesh networks; routing metrics; testbed; wireless mesh networks;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1536-1233

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMC.2013.148

Filename

6654175