Survey of Routing Metric in Wireless Mesh Networks

As an important technology in the construction of the next generation wireless communication system, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) has the advantages of high bandwidth, flexible networking, wide coverage and low investment risk. Routing metrics have a great impact on network. Appropriate routing metrics can reduce intra-stream and inter-stream interference, improve throughput and reliability, achieve load balancing and eliminate network hot spots. At present, research on routing metrics for WMNs has made some progress. Relevant scholars have proposed various routing metrics, but no scholars have compared and classified these routing metrics. In this paper, the classical routing metrics in WMNs and the routing metrics proposed in the last ten years are studied. The following conclusions are drawn from these investigations. Firstly, delay, packet loss rate and bandwidth are the most commonly considered factors in routing metrics. Secondly, routing metrics separately describe the types of disturbances that lead to the introduction of variable constants. Thirdly, routing metrics often ignore the choice of gateway nodes. Finally, delay is the most important parameter of routing metrics. For example, the introduction of bandwidth and bottleneck channels is for more accurate calculation of delay. NS3 is used to simulate Hop Routing Metric (HOP) and Distance Routing Metric. The simulation results show that in a small network, Distance Routing Metric can effectively reduce the delay and increase the network throughput.