Rope ladder routing: Position-based multipath routing for wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we present a novel multipath structure called rope-ladder which combines the advantages of path, node and link protection schemes. We also propose a position-based multipath routing protocol in order to efficiently construct rope-ladders in wireless networks. By design, the paths which are constructed by our protocol are closely together which allows to quickly switch back and forth between them in cases of node or link failures. Hence, the size of loss gaps (i.e. the number of consecutively lost packets) can be minimized. Previous works mostly confine themselves to overall packet loss comparisons. However, the loss gap size is crucial to ensure high quality for gap-sensitive traffic like voice flows. Our multipath structure can also tolerate failures of multiple consecutive nodes on the primary path, and has a superior path diversity and path lifetime compared to even perfect braids. We evaluate the performance of our protocol using analysis and simulations¹.