Proposal and Performance Evaluation of a Multicast Routing Protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks Based on Network Load

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) can provide wide range Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) area by connecting Access Points (APs) ofWLANs with each other using radio communications. A routing protocol is very important to keep communication quality over radio multihop communications because radio waves are impacted much by surrounding environment.When we use multiuser shared applications like a video conference and an IP phone, it is predicted that large amount of traffic flows on network. Therefore, we should consider network loads to use these applications. In this paper, we propose a multicast routing protocol forWMNs which considers network loads and hop count. Furthermore, we evaluate performance by simulation. In the simulation results,we showthat the proposed protocol has better performance than a conventional protocol(MAODV) at high loaded scenario.