An AODV-improved routing based on power control in WiFi mesh networks

Most existing ad hoc routing protocols attempt to minimize the number of hops from source to destination pairs. These routing protocols are all designed under the assumption of using only single data rate in the wireless channel. One of the current trends in wireless communication (e.g., IEEE 802.11b) is to enable devices to operate using many different transmission rates in order to accommodate a wide range of channel conditions. This paper introduces a routing algorithm utilizing the multi-rate and multi-range capacity in WiFi (wireless fidelity) mesh networks. Since transmission rate is inversely proportional to transmission range and every range corresponds with a transmit power level, we propose selecting high data-rate route by adjusting the transmit power level when establishing the route. The characteristic of this method is power control, it discovers the required data-rate link within the transmission range through adjusting the transmit power to corresponding level. We show through simulation that the proposed technique improves the network throughput and minimizes the power consumption due to its utilization of multi-rate support from MAC and physical layers.