Geographic HWMP (Geo-HWMP) routing method for AMI network with lossless packet forwarding

Abstract

Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) transfers time-based information and critical data between the consumer site and central control centre. AMI network needs maximum connectivity among the smart meters that are data generators as well as forwarders. Wireless mesh network (WMN) is used to deploy AMI network. IEEE 802.11s standard is used for WMN uses airtime metric to choose next hop for the path. In this study, the position of the next hop is also considered to reduce the length of the path. The coverage area is divided into number of sectors and ranges with different radii. The next hop is selected from the sector in the direction towards the destination based on the weighted airtime metric, where the weight refers to the link quality. The sector division reduces the length of the path, and the link quality-based selection reduces packet loss and ensures reliable communication. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated, and it is compared with hybrid wireless mesh routing protocol (HWMP) and state-of-the-art schemes, namely, greedy and compass in terms of hop count, end-to-end delay and packet loss ratio. The simulation results show that the proposed method generates routing path with minimum end-to-end delay and packet loss ratio.