Toward a Comprehensive Model for Performance Analysis of Opportunistic Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Opportunistic routing (OR) is a promising paradigm that has been proposed for wireless mesh networks. This routing paradigm takes advantage of the broadcast nature of the wireless medium to increase the reliability of transmissions in multihop wireless networks. The selection of a set of candidates involves satisfying the basic requirements of the model, in which packets are forwarded toward the destination. In OR, if one of the selected candidates does not receive the packet, another candidate might be able to continue forwarding the packet. The decision of which forwarder to choose is made by coordination between candidates that have successfully received the transmitted packet. In this paper, we propose a discrete-time Markov chain as a general model for OR and demonstrate how it can be used to evaluate the performance of OR protocols. We also review three well-known OR protocols that we have selected as a study case. Our study demonstrates how our model facilitates better understanding of the combination of a number of candidates and retransmissions and their significant contributions to the successful delivery of data packets. Thus, this shows that our model can help in the design of future OR protocols and efficient candidate selection algorithms.