An interference-aware routing metric for multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks

Achieving efficient QoS routing is one of the major concerns in multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks (WMNs). Due to interference among links, bandwidth in these networks is neither a concave nor an additive metric. Thus, choosing the highest-throughput path among all feasible ones is a very challenging task. We propose in this paper a new routing metric which strikes a balance between the quality of wireless links and the resulting inter-flow and intra-flow interference introduced using such links on specific channels. Our metric does not necessarily choose the best path in terms of throughput. It selects a high-throughput path with low inter-flow and intra-flow interference by making a judicious use of different channels. Simulation results show that our routing metric significantly outperforms previously proposed metrics especially in large-scale WMNs. An improvement up to 20% of the total network throughput is particularly observed when multiple concurrent flows are considered in the network.