An abstraction layer for neighborhood discovery and cross-layer metrics

Topology-awareness is an important feature of communication algorithms and protocols for wireless multi-hop networks. In its basic form, topology-awareness requires nodes to know their immediate neighbors and, if possible, the quality of the links between them. In general, neighborhood discovery is done by routing protocols; the problem with such an approach is that fundamental changes in node characteristics require revisiting the routing protocol, especially if this latter relies on cross-layer metrics. In this paper, we propose an abstraction layer that performs neighborhood discovery and link quality assessment. In this way, neighborhood discovery is decoupled from the upper layers. Our abstraction layer stands as an active building block for the implementation of routing protocols or any other IEEE 802.11 communication algorithm for wireless multi-hop networks. It provides an updated list of neighbors, along with several statistics about link quality that can be used, for instance, to compute cross-layer metrics.