Interference and load balancing routing metrics used in wireless mesh network: New trend and challenges

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) is an integrated concept deployed for the data communication systems for Internet access. These networks need incorporate and effective data management, load balancing, interference management and traffic congestion mechanisms. Data routing in these network by using new and intelligent routing protocols based on routing metrics play vital role to increase the network performance. However, the WMN networks have suffered with load balancing, interference and other routing challenges because only one or two internet gateways deployed in these networks to access the internet. To fulfill these network requirements, there is pressing need to design more efficient routing protocol to deal the WMN networks and provide full network functionalities. The routing protocols are using different routing metrics or combination of some routing metrics such as inter-flow interference, hop count and load balancing for routing decisions. Therefore, a proficient routing metric is required to make routing protocol more effective. In this paper, we identified and reviewed many existing routing protocols based on interference, load balancing and hop count as their routing metrics. We discussed existing protocols based on their working, metrics and effectiveness. We anticipate that this research review paper would help the researcher to conduct innovative research incorporating with the existing routing protocols available in literature.