Cluster-based Multi-path Routing Algorithm for Multi-hop Wireless Network

Multi-path routing has been studied widely in wired networks. Multi-path routing is known to increase end-to-end throughput and provide load balancing in wired networks. However, its advantage is not obvious in wireless multi-hop network because the traffic along the multiple paths may interfere with adjacent paths. In the paper, we introduce a new multi-path routing scheme, Cluster-Based Multi-Path Routing for multi-hop wireless networks. The main idea of the proposed routing scheme is to extend the hop-by-hop multi-path to a cluster-by-cluster multi-path. In cluster network, each cluster can work independently from other clusters and hence reduce interference. The purpose of the proposed scheme is to find a less interfering path for wireless multi-hop networks. We also showed the throughput improvement of the proposed scheme through simulations.