WARF: Component Based Platform for Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, we propose a Wireless and Autonomic Routing Framework (WARF), designed for the deployment of a new generation of routing protocols in wireless mesh networks. The framework supports cross-layer operations, multiple radio interfaces, real-time resource monitoring, dynamic resource allocation and multipath adaptive forwarding. WARF nodes are decomposed into four components, contributing to the overall framework behavior: Resource Maintenance, Route Maintenance, Data Forwarding, and Policy Control. The framework is ready for a simultaneous deployment of different routing protocols or their components. It is based on common features found in existing routing protocols. The protocols can be implemented depending on the network topology properties (static, dynamic), usage mode (unicast, broadcast), or other properties (mobility, QoS etc.). Due to the real-time requirements and preference for distributed operations, IPv6 with some extensions is used as a transport mechanism for control data dissemination. In this paper, an example of a WARF implementation on Linux OpenWRT is described, and a message sequence chart of a generic protocol for radio channel management, which uses WARF control messages, is presented.