CETT: A cross layer routing metric for cooperative wireless Ad hoc networks

Cooperative link layer protocols are typically used in single hop networks to enhance the link layer capabilities using a special node, called relay. In multi-hop networks, a frame is sent from an original source to the final destination through a series of intermediate nodes. The performance benefits of cooperation at link layer can be channeled into multi-hop networks as well. This paper addresses the challenge in finding multi-hop routes accounting for relays at the link layer by proposing the cooperative expected transmission time (CETT) metric. CETT is used to compute the route, i.e., the sequence of intermediate nodes in terms of the minimum end-to-end average transmission time taking into account the cooperative nature of the link layer.