A routing protocol using a reliable and high-throughput path metric for multi-hop multi-rate ad hoc networks

In this paper, a high-throughput routing protocol for multi-rate ad hoc networks using lower layer information is proposed. By choosing the route with the minimum value of the proposed “Route Assessment Index” metric which has the form of entropy function, the selected route is ensured to have high throughput and link reliability among route candidates. Link bottleneck is avoided in the chosen route; hence, the packet drop rate due to buffer overflow is alleviated. Furthermore, an effective route discovery strategy is also introduced along with new routing metric. The correctness of the proposal is proven, and the simulation results show that our new metric provides an accurate and efficient method for evaluating and selecting the best route in multi-rate ad hoc networks.