Multipath Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks
Nagesh S. Nandiraju, Deepti S. Nandiraju, and Dharma P. Agrawal
Center for Distributed and Mobile Computing, Dept. of ECECS, University of Cincinnati - Cincinnati, OH 45221
(nandirns, nandirds, dpa)@ececs.uc.edu
Abstract
Wireless Mesh Networks are envisioned to support the
wired backbone with a wireless backbone for providing
internet connectivity to residential areas and offices.
Routing protocols designed for Mobile Adhoc Networks
(MANETs) primarily concentrate on finding a single
best possible route to any destination out of the various
paths available. However in wireless mesh networks,
traffic is primarily routed either towards the Internet
Gateways (IGWs) or from the IGWs to the Access Points
(APs). Thus, if multiple APs choose the best throughput
path towards a gateway, the traffic loads on certain
paths and mesh routers increases tremendously thereby
deteriorating the overall performance of the network.
To this end, we propose a novel multi-path hybrid
routing protocol, Multipath Mesh (MMESH), that
effectively discovers multiple paths. We also propose
elegant traffic splitting algorithms for balancing traffic
over these multiple paths to synergistically improve the
overall performance. Through extensive simulations, we
observe that our protocol works very well to cope with
the variations in the network. Our protocol also
improves the performance of flows traversing multiple
hops.
1 Introduction
Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are
envisioned to support the wired backbone with a
wireless backbone for providing internet
connectivity to residential areas and offices. The
primary advantage of these networks is their
rapid deployment and ease of installation. Unlike
traditional WiFi networks where each access
point is connected to the wired network, WMNs
use the paradigm of multihop communication. In
WMNs, Mesh Routers (hybrid version of Access
Points) communicate with the external network
(for e.g. Internet) by cooperatively forwarding
each others’ traffic towards the gateway nodes
(a.k.a Mesh Points) which are directly connected
to the wired backbone. In this paper, we use the
terms APs and MRs interchangeably. Similar to
the wired network where intermediate routers
form backhaul and route traffic from one network
to another, in a WMN, Mesh points and Mesh
routers forward each other’s traffic in order to
establish connectivity. Note here that Mesh
routers (MRs) and Mesh points (MPs) are similar
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in design with the only exception that a mesh
point is connected to the wired network and thus
also called as Internet gateway. Figure 1 shows a
sample mesh network in a university.
Figure 1. A sample mesh network in an University
With the envisaged application of WMN in
providing broadband wireless internet access to
end users, the network should have high capacity
and enough bandwidth to support the
requirements. A wide range of applications with
different requirements can be run over these
networks, for instance, audio-video conferencing
that require minimal jitter and finite delay
bounds, file sharing that require large bandwidth
etc. amongst others. These applications are
predominantly Internet oriented and thus the
traffic is either from the end users towards the
Internet gateway or in the reverse direction [1].
This is a sharp contrast to MANETs, where
traffic can be assumed to be uniformly
distributed between any pair of nodes. Intuitively,
any routing algorithm designed for a WMN will
aim to invariably choose the best links while
finding routes from any router to IGW.
Consequently, certain nodes or links can be
heavily loaded while some nodes/links are
seldom used. However this may lead to an
undesirable situation in which the best paths may
degrade due to the load, consequently resulting in
suboptimal performance. Even a routing protocol
that periodically monitors links/paths cannot help
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in such a case, because it may result in too many
oscillations and lead to an unstable operation of
the network. Moreover, in a WMN, the traffic
that is heterogeneous in nature and comprising of
significant multimedia content, supporting the
desired Quality of Service (QoS) becomes an
important requirement. Thus, recalling the chief
functionality of a WMN as the means of
extending internet connectivity, any proposed
solution must efficiently balance the traffic in the
network and yet meet the application demands.
In a WMN, it is possible to reach an IGW or
any mesh router (MR) through multiple paths.
Thus if multiple paths can be utilized to balance
the traffic, then the aforementioned situation
would seldom occur. In this paper, we propose to
exploit multiple paths to synergistically improve
the overall performance of WMNs. To this end,
we propose a novel multi-path route discovery
and maintenance for WMN. We further propose a
traffic splitting algorithm that can be used over
these multiple routes to balance the traffic load
uniformly. Rest of the paper is organized as
follows: Section 2 reviews some related work on
routing protocols for mesh networks. In section
3, we describe our proposed multipath routing
protocol. We then present some traffic splitting
algorithms for efficiently balancing the load over
different paths in section 4. In section 5, we study
the performance of our protocol. Section 6
presents some conclusions and future directions
of research.
2 Related Work
Using traditional routing protocols designed for
MANETs may actually create many hotspots,
and lead to subdued performance. For example
popular routing protocols for Ad Hoc Networks
such as AODV, DSR decide the routes solely
based on the number of hops. Recent work [2] [8]
has revealed that shorter hop routes prevent the
network from realizing higher performance when
the wireless interface has multi-rate capability.
They present a source routing protocol (LQSR)
[3] for multi-radio multi-channel WMNs using a
novel routing metric, Weighted Cumulative
Expected Transmission Time (WCETT). The
proposed metric enables the nodes to choose the
best possible routes that have good mix of
channel variant hops and high bandwidth links.
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However they do not consider load balancing i.e.
the traffic concentration and congestion on
certain paths. Two nodes may choose the same
next hop node after hearing an advertisement,
thus leading to potential bottleneck nodes (hot
next-hop). Another problem is if a node has good
link to the next hop but it is heavily loaded then
there is no use in selecting a path to IGW through
such a node. Thus their protocol is may not be
scalable to the size of a community WMN (which
envisions providing wireless internet connectivity
to users). Yang et al. [5] showed that WCETT
can in fact create routing loops in certain
situations. They further propose another routing
protocol (LIBRA) considering the intra and inter
flow interference. Even this protocol does not
focus on traffic congestion buildup along good
paths. Raniwala et al. [4], explore distributed
channel assignment and routing in a multi-
channel WMN by creating a spanning tree rooted
at the gateway, but they do not focus on network
load balancing. Ramachandran et al. [6] propose
another spanning tree based protocol AODV-ST
that modifies the AODV protocol to include
Expected Transmission Time (ETT) as the
routing metric. Each AP routes traffic through a
primary gateway that has least end-to-end delay.
In order to estimate the least loaded gateway,
periodic RTT probing is performed which is
expensive. Moreover they do not consider
routing in multi-channel architecture, thus inter-
flow and intra-flow interference still remain a big
challenge. Alicherry et al. [9] propose heuristics
for joint channel assignment, routing and link
scheduling problem for multi-radio wireless
mesh networks. They focus on achieving optimal
channel assignment with an interference-free link
schedule and routing by satisfying certain
fairness, link congestion, link scheduling
constraints among others.
3 Multi-path routing in wireless mesh
networks (MMESH)
As explained earlier, routing protocols designed
for MANETs primarily focus on finding a single
best possible route to any destination. However
in WMNs, traffic is primarily routed either
towards the IGWs or from the IGWs to the APs.
Thus if multiple APs choose the best path
towards a gateway, the traffic in this path
increases. As more traffic is routed through a best
route, it increases the load on the intermediate
MRs and thereby deteriorating the overall
performance of the path. As can be noticed this
performance degradation is due to the traffic
build up on certain hot paths. But, if we utilize
multiple paths to balance the traffic, such a
situation would seldom occur. We propose to
exploit these multiple paths to synergistically
improve the overall performance in a WMN.
3.1 Multi-path Route Discovery
Each node in the network selects a set of
routes from itself to the destination and informs
all the corresponding intermediate nodes. The
idea of restricting the set of routes for forwarding
traffic from a particular source is derived from
the traditional source routing technique which
offers a unique advantage. With source routing,
we can incorporate the decision of choosing the
route with good channel diversity which is
otherwise not possible in distance vector routing.
We divide the route discovery and route
maintenance procedures into different phases.
The following subsections will describe the
details of the protocol.
3.1.1 Initial Network setup phase
This phase allows all the nodes to discover
multiple routes to the IGWs. The IGWs and MRs
that have at least one path to the IGW can
broadcast the advertisements. Initially, when the
network is just started, only the gateway nodes
broadcast advertisements of internet connectivity.
Neighboring MRs setup paths to all the possible
IGWs in the order of their performance. These
nodes further broadcast the connection
advertisements. In these advertisements they
announce all their routes to the IGWs with their
order of preference. These advertisements can
include certain metrics such as ETT or delay to
the Gateways (additional information such as its
local load, average queue lengths etc. can also be
included). A MR after hearing these
advertisements then decides the different routes
that are acceptable to it and adds this to its
routing table. It then unicasts a doesn’t have any routes already, it selects both of
PARENT_NOTIFICATION message to the
selected parent MRs (from whom it has selected
the route(s)). This message contains all the routes
it has chosen from the advertised routes. Thus
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through this notification message, a child MR
notifies to its parent MR which paths to use for
forwarding its traffic. Parent MRs receiving this
notification message then registers the child MR
in its routing table and updates the route(s) that
should be used to forward the traffic from the
child MR. The parent MR also establishes a
reverse route to the child MR.
After processing the
PARENT_NOTIFICATION message, a parent
MR will then unicasts another notification
message (called CHILD_NOTIFICATION) to all
the corresponding MRs (that occur in the selected
routes). This CHILD_NOTIFICATION is
propagated all the way until it reaches the IGWs.
This CHILD_NOTIFICATION message informs
all the intermediate MRs along the route
including the IGW about a child MR and the path
that can be followed to reach this child MR. On
receiving the CHILD_NOTIFICATION message,
each parent MR registers this child MR and
follow similar steps (as described earlier) in
registering the multiple route(s) to reach a child
MR in their respective routing tables. Thus each
intermediate MR (including the IGW) that is in
the path from a child MR to IGW now has one or
more route(s) to the corresponding child MR.
We now illustrate the operation of our
protocol using a simple example. Consider the
sample mesh network shown in figure 2. In this
figure there are two gateway nodes (GW0 and
GW1) which are connected to the wired network.
These gateways announce their presence by
periodic beacons which include some additional
information as discussed earlier. MRs 1, 3 and 4
receive these advertisements. MR 3 receives two
advertisements (from GW 0 and GW 1). Let us
suppose that the link between MR 3 and GW 1 is
better than the link between MR 3 and GW 0. It
thus prioritizes its routes to the GWs according to
the link capacity and path performance (WCETT
can be used as a metric).
Now consider the case of MR 6. Let us suppose it
receives the first route advertisements to GW
from MR 5 (5-4-GW0, and 5-1-GW0). Since it
them and sends a PARENT_NOTIFY message to
MR 5 including its preference of the routes to
MR 5. MR 5 then creates an entry in its routing
table and notes the preferred next hops as
specified by the child MR (MR 6). It then sends
a CHILD_NOTIFY message to notify its parents
(in this case MR 4 and MR 1) about the child
(MR 6) along with the selected routes. Similar to
MR 5 they also register the preferred next hops
for traffic from MR 6. This notification goes until
it reaches the GW0.
Figure 2: Mesh network scenario
3.1.2 Route maintenance
A WMN is an ad hoc network and hence can
undergo periodic up gradation. As new MRs can
be added or some existing MRs may be switched
off etc, new routes should be discovered and
some obsolete routes should be detected. The
MRs should be promptly informed about these
changes in the network and avoid sending traffic
over stale routes.
In the route maintenance phase of our
protocol, we facilitate the monitoring and
exchange of the changing information in the
network. After initial route discovery phase, each
MR continuously monitors the performance of all
the active paths. On finding new routes or stale
routes, a MR appropriately validates its routing
tables and announces this information to its
neighboring nodes. Neighboring nodes promptly
update their routing table using this information
and further propagate the changes.
In order to facilitate faster failure recovery,
we provide certain authority to intermediate
nodes. When an MR detects the failure of a
particular next hop, it immediately checks its
routing table to identify all the routes that pass
through the failed MR. Upon identifying all such
routes; it temporarily suspends the scheduling
through this node. Thus, even though the source
nodes that have selected the routes that are far
away, they are not affected by any intermediate
node failures.
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3.1.3 Fast rediscovery of paths
Although topology changes in a WMN are very
uncommon, nevertheless there is still some
possibility. Some possibilities are when a new
MR is added to the network or a MR reboots.
Moreover due to varied reasons 1 , the links are
highly unstable and temporary glitches can occur.
In such cases, some routes may become stale and
thus it is highly important for any routing
algorithm to quickly adapt to these changes by
facilitating faster recovery.
We consider the two cases when an existing
MR reboots or goes down in an active network.
In such a case, the adjacent nodes will detect its
absence and update the routing table. Specifically
when an MR detects the failure of a neighbor, it
checks its routing table to verify if any route has
this neighbor in the next hop field. If such routes
are found, they are temporarily suspended. When
a route is suspended, the traffic from the affected
source nodes is routed through other possible
next hop nodes. If however there was only one
next hop chosen by the source node, then the MR
is authorized to route the traffic through alternate
paths until the threshold time. If the neighbor
node recovers before this threshold time, the
route is made active again. Otherwise the source
node will be notified by an RERR.
4 Traffic balancing at Mesh Routers
In the previous sections, we have seen how each
MR (and Gateways) elegantly discovers and
maintains multiple routes to and from the
Gateways. Once we have these multiple routes
setup, our task is to divide the traffic among these
routes to balance the load, without degrading the
performance. In this section, we will describe
how each MR uses these available route(s) to
achieve load balancing.
4.1 Round Robin scheduling
This is by far the simplest traffic splitting
mechanism that can be used for effective traffic
load balancing in a network. A node sends every
packet to a different next hop thus uniformly
distributing traffic over in the network. However
this scheme suffers from setback due to possible
out of order delivery of packets belonging to
1
Possible reasons are due to small scale fading and
multipath signal transmissions
same flow. The transport layer protocols need to
maintain a large buffer to cope up with out of
order delivery and can lead to unnecessary loss
with protocols such as TCP.
4.2 Congestion aware routing
One of the important features of any multi-path
routing algorithm should be the ability to
effectively mitigate congestion and avoid routing
traffic through congested routes. High average
queue lengths indicate high congestion at a node
which can lead to possible packet droppings in
turn decreasing the performance of the network.
Thus if we find that a particular next hop node
has high average queue length over a period of
time, we temporarily skip that node and send the
traffic through other neighboring nodes.
5 Performance Evaluation
In this section, we evaluate the performance
of our proposed routing protocol using extensive
simulations using ns-2. We have implemented
our MMESH protocol in ns-2 simulator (version
2.29) [9]. We also enhanced ns-2 by modifying
its default 802.11 MAC layer implementation to
support the multi-rate transmissions specified by
IEEE 802.11b standard. We considered a 3x3
grid of MRs serving up to 50 end users/clients
(CN). Each MR is equipped with two radios: one
for communicating in the backbone network i.e.
with other peer MRs while the second radio is
used to explicitly communicate with CNs. The
bottom left MR i.e. MR0, serves as the Internet
gateway for all other MRs.
5.1 Throughput performance with UDP traffic
We start aggregate of flows from CNs under
MR 8, MR 6, and MR 4 when the simulation
time is 5, 20, and 30 seconds respectively. Figure
3 (a-c) shows the instantaneous throughput of the
flows from the three clients. As we can observe,
when we use AODV as the routing protocol, the
clients that are closer to the IGW enjoy very high
throughput. Initially when only CNs under MR 8
are transmitting in the network, they achieve
decent throughput of around 300 Kbps. But when
the flows from CNs under MR 4 start, flows from
MR 8 suffer from severe packet loss.
Different factors contribute for this poor
performance. The primary reason for this can be
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attributed due to the path selected by MR 8 for
reaching the IGW. As it uses only a single path,
traffic from nearby nodes can choke the longer
hop length flows [7]. Self interference and unfair
channel access are the other reasons that
contribute to this starvation of this client.
On the other hand, when we use our MMESH,
the traffic is distributed over multiple routes.
Figure 3(b) shows the throughput performance
when MMESH is used. We observe a substantial
improvement in the throughputs of flows from
MR 8. Since the packets are distributed over
multiple routes, the packets that are transmitted
through the non-congested nodes are thus not
dropped due to overflowing buffers. We observe
that a majority of these packets can successfully
reach the IGW. However as we still route some
of the packets through the congested nodes, these
are lost due to the buffer over flows.
Figure 3(c) shows the instantaneous
throughputs of the three flows when we use our
congestion aware multipath routing mechanism.
We can notice the increased throughput of the
flow from MR 8. Recall from section 3.2, each
node reports some of the node specific metrics
such as average queue length to its neighbors
through the periodic HELLO advertisements.
This information is used to determine whether a
packet should be sent or skipped through a
particular next hop node. When a MR notices
high average queue lengths in a next hop node
for a period of time, it avoids sending any
packets through this node until the congestion
reduces. This optimization not only helps in
improving the performance of the flows by
reducing the packet drop probability, but also
greatly reduces the wastage of valuable
bandwidth.
Next we also measure the throughputs of these
clients by varying the traffic generation rates of
their flows. Figure 4(a-c) shows the throughput
with increasing traffic generation rate. We can
observe a tremendous improvement in the
throughput of clients under MR 8 without
affecting the performance of other clients. From
figure 4 (c), we can notice that Congestion aware
MMESH helps in further improving the
performance by as high as 100%.
 350 MR-8 400 MR-8 400 MR-8
MR-6 MR-6 MR-6
300 350 350
MR-4 MR-4 MR-4
300 300
Throughput (Kbps

Throughput (Kbps
Throughput (Kbps
250
250 250
200
200 200
150
150 150
100
100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 0 25 50 75 100 125 150
Time (s) Time (s) Time (s)

(a)AODV (b) MMESH (c) Congestion aware MMESH

Figure 3: Instantaneous throughput of the flows observed with different routing protocols

350 250 250

300
200 MR-8 200
Throughput (Kbps

Throughput (Kbps
Throughput (Kbps

250 MR-8 MR-6

150 MR-4 150
200 MR-6
MR-4
150 100 100
100 MR-8
50 50 MR-6
50 MR-4
0 0 0
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Load (Kbps) Load (Kbps) Load (Kbps)

(a)AODV (b) MMESH (c) Congestion aware MMESH

Figure 4: Aggregate Throughput of the flows from clients under different mesh routers

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