QoS Routing for Mesh-Based Wireless LANs

Wireless LANs with their increased data rate become an attractive technology for connecting mobile users to the Internet. Efficient deployment of wireless LANs will require the ability to extend the wireless LANs coverage without the need to deploy a very large number of access points. Mesh-based wireless LANs are an attractive solution to this problem. These networks extend wireless LAN coverage by using each node in the network as a router, resulting in a multihop topology. In this paper we introduce a novel routing algorithm, wireless mesh routing (WMR), that provides quality-of-service (QoS) support and accounts for the characteristics of both infrastructure-based wireless LANs and ad hoc networks. The algorithm is validated using the OPNET modeler. The simulation results show that the mesh network using WMR protocol can provide QoS support and react dynamically to the network status changes with low control overheads. Using the proposed software architecture the proposed routing protocol can be implemented with any MAC protocol, resulting in easy implementation in existing wireless nodes.