Adaptive Routing in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

This paper examines the question, whether iterative routing based on Dijkstra´s algorithm is a suitable routing algorithm for the operation of cellular multi-hop or mesh network scenarios with gateway access to some backbone network. For that purpose, the general performance of different routing metrics is examined. Various load scenarios are generated in order to illustrate load-balancing effects and stability issues, as permanent re-routing may also lead to oscillations, where traffic is shifted back-and-forth between alternative paths. Therefore, different methods to stabilize the network are presented additionally. It turns out that the omission of the impact of a flow´s own traffic on its routing metrics manages to prevent these oscillations efficiently