Load Balanced Coding Aware Multipath Routing for Wireless Mesh Networks

The growth of network coding opportunities is considered the unique optimization goal by most current network coding based routing algorithms for wireless mesh networks. This usually results in flows aggregation problem in areas with coding opportunities, and degrades the network performance. This paper proposes a Load balanced coding aware multipath routing (LCMR) for wireless mesh networks. To facilitate the evaluation of discovered multiple paths and the tradeoffs between coding opportunity and load balancing, a novel routing metric, Load balanced coding aware routing metric (LCRM) is presented, which considers the load degree of nodes when detects coding opportunities. LCMR could spread traffic over multipath to further balance load. Simulation results demonstrate that LCMR could evenly spread the traffic over the network with increasing network throughput in a heavy load at the expense of some coding opportunities.