Evaluation of multi-radio extensions to AODV for wireless mesh networks

Due to their self-configuring and self-healing capabilities, as well as their low equipment and deployment cost, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) based on commodity hardware present a promising technology for a wide range of applications. Currently, one of key challenges that WMN technology faces is the limited capacity and scalability due to high levels of interference, which is typical for multi-hop wireless networks. A simple and relatively low-cost approach to address this problem that has recently been proposed is the use of multiple wireless network interfaces (radios) per node. Operating the radios on each node on different, non-overlapping channels allows making more efficient use of the radio spectrum and thereby reducing interference and contention. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of the Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol in a Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Network. Our simulation results show that under high traffic load conditions, Multi-Radio AODV (AODV-MR) is able to efficiently utilize the increased spectrum, and proves to be far superior to single radio AODV. We therefore believe that AODV-MR is a promising candidate for multi-radio WMNs.