Novel Dynamic Ant Genetic Algorithm for QoS Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless technology is emerging as a key technology for the future networks. Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as an indispensable technology for deployment of wireless services for various applications in personal, enterprise, and metropolitan areas. Researchers are working actively in different fields of WMNs for providing better services. Routing protocols play a vital role in WMNs to provide reliable configuration and maintenance of topology of the network. Designing a suitable cost metric for routing protocols to provide quality links for data transmission is the backbone of WMNs. Many cost metrics have been proposed for WMNs and is still an active research topic as new performance metrics need to be discovered due to the dynamics of this field. This paper considers the genetic algorithm-based routing technique for WMN.We have studied the existing cost metrics and proposed a genetic algorithm technique for routing in WMN. To evaluate the genetic algorithm, and to determine the relative performance of the genetic algorithm in the context of routing in WMN, we carry out experiments on two test systems. We have evaluated the quality of the results produced by our algorithm with the traditional hop count metric results. Our results show that routing in WMN using genetic algorithm produces better results as compared to traditional hop count metric results. Finally, we carry out a detailed analysis of results, which help us in gaining an insight into the suitability of genetic algorithm for routing in WMN.

Current works on the joint routing and channel assignment (JRC) problem in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) assume that all links operate at the base rate. In other words, they do not consider the presence of multiple bit-rates. However, in multi-rate WMNs, the achievable throughput of a link operating at higher rates could be much less than its bit-rate when it has to contend with low-rate links. This is also known as the multirate sharing problem. To address the problem, we first present a numerical formulation for estimating the dynamic link capacity, which can indicate the degree of the multi-rate sharing problem. Next, we propose an optimization model called MR <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> C, which solves the JRC problem by considering the dynamic link capacity in order to maximize the throughput in multi-rate, multi-radio, multi-channel WMNs. We then reformulate the primal problem as a Lagrangian dual problem, and apply the subgradient method to approach the dual. Finally, since each subproblem in the dual problem is also a non-linear problem, we design a polynomialtime algorithm to solve it. Our experiment results demonstrate that the proposed capacity formulation can approximate the actual link throughput. We compare MR <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> C with the base-rate JRC model via simulations. The results show that MR <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> C achieves throughput gains of 3-4 times and recover from network failure efficiently.

QoS routing in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is a daunting task. Finding a path for a given flow depends not only on the bandwidth-delay requirements of that flow but also on the available bandwidth of all the nodes in that path and the amount of bandwidth consumption caused by that flow along its path. Contrary to the wired networks, these two parameters are not fixed and depend on the interference pattern of the network that in turn depends on the selected path itself. This converts the QoS routing in wireless mesh networks to a much harder problem. Existing methods use on-demand approach based on flooding of routing packets. This approach does not scale up to large networks. Field-based routing (FBR) is a promising approach to reduce the routing overhead for static route set up. However, it is not previously used for QoS routing. In this paper, we have developed a new FBR based QoS routing protocol for WMNs. Contribution of this paper is two folds. First, a one-pass field-based routing instead of regular two-pass approach is developed that significantly reduces the overhead of distributing routing information and computing the path and increases the QoS delivered to the flows. Secondly, a new routing metric named LU-IR is introduced that is shown to lower intra-flow and inter-flow interferences and results in increased network service capacity. The performance of the proposed algorithm is extensively studied through simulations. The results indicate that average delay of the flows is improved and the network throughput is increased compared to the existing schemes.

Finding the shortest route in wireless mesh networks is an important aspect. Many techniques are used to solve this problem like dynamic programming, evolutionary algorithms, weighted-sum techniques, and others. In this paper, we use dynamic programming techniques to find the shortest path in wireless mesh networks due to their generality, reduction of complexity and facilitation of numerical computation, simplicity in incorporating constraints, and their onformity to the stochastic nature of some problems. The routing problem is a multi-objective optimization problem with some constraints such as path capacity and end-to-end delay. Single-constraint routing problems and solutions using Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, and Floyd-Warshall algorithms are proposed in this work with a discussion on the difference between them. These algorithms find the shortest route through finding the optimal rate between two nodes in the wireless networks but with bounded end-to-end delay. The Dijkstra-based algorithm is especially favorable in terms of processing time. We also present a comparison between our proposed single-constraint Dijkstra-based routing algorithm and the mesh routing algorithm (MRA) existing in the literature to clarify the merits of the former.

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a scalable, reliable, and agile wireless network that supports many types of innovative technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), and Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Due to the limited number of orthogonal channels, interference between channels adversely affects the fair distribution of bandwidth among mesh clients, causing node starvation in terms of insufficient bandwidth distribution, which impedes the adoption of WMN as an efficient access technology. Therefore, a fair channel assignment is crucial for the mesh clients to utilize the available resources. However, the node starvation problem due to unfair channel distribution has been vastly overlooked during channel assignment by the extant research. Instead, existing channel assignment algorithms equally distribute the interference reduction on the links to achieve fairness which neither guarantees a fair distribution of the network bandwidth nor eliminates node starvation. In addition, the metaheuristic-based solutions such as genetic algorithm, which is commonly used for WMN, use randomness in creating initial population and selecting the new generation usually leading the search to local minima. To this end, this study proposes a Fairness-Oriented Semichaotic Genetic Algorithm-Based Channel Assignment Technique (FA-SCGA-CAA) to solve node starvation problem in wireless mesh networks. FA-SCGA-CAA maximizes link fairness while minimizing link interference using a genetic algorithm (GA) with a novel nonlinear fairness-oriented fitness function. The primary chromosome with powerful genes is created based on multicriterion links ranking channel assignment algorithm. Such a chromosome was used with a proposed semichaotic technique to create a strong population that directs the search towards the global minima effectively and efficiently. The proposed semichaotic technique was also used during the mutation and parent selection of the new genes. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed algorithm. A comparison with related work shows that the proposed FA-SCGA-CAA reduced the potential node starvation by 22% and improved network capacity utilization by 23%. It can be concluded that the proposed FA-SCGA-CAA is reliable to maintain high node-level fairness while maximizing the utilization of the network resources, which is the ultimate goal of many wireless networks.

Wireless technology has become an essential part of this era’s human life and has the capability of connecting virtually to any place within the universe. A mesh network is a self healing wireless network, built through a number of distributed and redundant nodes to support variety of applications and provide reliability. Similarly, anycasting is an important service that might be used for a variety of applications. In this paper we have studied anycast routing in the wireless mesh networks and the anycast traffic from the gateway to the mesh network having multiple anycast groups. We have also studied the geocast traffic in which the packets reach to the group head via unicast traffic and then are broadcasted inside the group. Moreover, we have studied the intergroup communication between different anycast groups. The review of the related literature shows that no one has considered anycasting and geocasting from gateway to the mesh network while considering the multiple anycast groups and intergroup communication. The network is modeled, simulated and analyzed for its various parameters using OMNET++ simulator.

The emergence of nomadic multimedia applications, such as multimedia conferencing, distance learning, video phones, video/movie-on-demand, and education-on-demand, has recently generated much interest in multi-hop wireless mesh networks (WMNs) to support diverse Quality-of-Service (QoS). In the existing WMN QoS routing protocols, the methods of bandwidth calculation and allocation were proposed to determine routes with bandwidth guaranteed for QoS applications. This paper studies two NP-hard problems, the maximum bandwidth routing problem (abbreviated to MBRP) and the maximum flow routing problem (abbreviated to MFRP). Given a source node s and a destination node d in a multi-hop wireless mesh network, the MBRP is to determine an s-to-d path that can carry a maximum amount of traffic from s to d and the MFRP is to determine the maximum flow from s to d, both retaining the network bandwidth-satisfied. In this paper, heuristic algorithms for the two problems are proposed. Upper bounds on their optimal values are derived, and a lower bound is derived on the feasible value obtained for the MBRP. With the upper bound and the lower bound, an approximation ratio for the heuristic algorithm of the MBRP is obtained. The effectiveness of the heuristic algorithms is further verified by experiments. A generalized interference model is also discussed.

This paper proposes a new multi-population based global optimization algorithm called Parallel Three Parent Genetic Algorithm (P3PGA). The proposed approach is an extension of 3PGA approach. Performance of the proposed algorithm was evaluated on the eleven CEC-2014 benchmark functions. We compared the performance of proposed P3PGA algorithm with 16 other algorithms. It was observed that out of the 11 benchmarks functions P3PGA outperformed all other 16 approaches on 5 benchmark functions. Out of 5, for 2 functions the best performance of P3PGA was also equaled by few other approaches. For the other 3 functions the performance of P3PGA was unmatched by any of the other 16 algorithms. Further, this paper proposes a new P3PGA based optimal route evaluation approach for routing in Wireless Mesh Networks. The proposed approach was implemented in MATLAB and simulated for various WMN sizes and scenarios. We compared its performance with 8 other approaches namely, Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) approach, Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Genetic Algorithm (GA), Biogeography Based Optimization (BBO), Firefly Algorithm (FA), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), BAT and Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) based optimal cost route evaluation approaches. The P3PGA based approach outperformed all other 8 approaches for the WMNs sized 1000 nodes and above.

Voice over IP (VoIP) over a wireless mesh network (WMN) is a killer application candidate of the next generation services over wireless and mobile network infrastructure. Yet, the routing and transport efficiencies in consideration of specific attributes of WMNs have been little emphasized. Distinctively from conventional networks, the major traffic pattern of WMNs is anycast (one-to-one-of-many). To fully utilize the service aspects of WMNs, load balancing and scalability should simultaneously be supported. For VoIP, one challenge is to maintain the perceived quality depending on both loss and delay. In this paper, we assess autonomous load balancing anycast routing regarding VoIP supportability. The protocol is based on physics analogy and a distributed algorithm. We compare the protocol with shortest-path routing and back-pressure routing via simulations. Simulation results exhibit that autonomous load balancing of the protocol efficiently supports voice calls to guarantee the certain level of quality.

The ultimate goal of routing in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is to find the “good” paths between the source and destination. Considering of the characteristics of this new networking paradigm, such as low mobility and less restriction from the energy effect, the focus is on the design and optimization of the technology to establish the path that can reflect this network feature. In this paper, an efficient routing algorithm is proposed based on decision-making sequence in WMNs, and the routing process is mapped into multi-stage decision process. We construct a mathematical model for it and present a multi-decision sequential routing method taking use of the idea of dynamic programming. In addition, a new metric (EEDT) for routing based on the information of MAC layer in WMNs is given, which optimized the two objectives- end to end delay and throughput. In the end, the multi-decision sequential routing algorithm (MDSR) is proposed that synthesized the suggesting method and new metric. The path selected by MDSR would be better based on the mathematical model, and it has lower delay of routing building. At the same time, EEDT can accurately capture the quality of the network links. Simulation results show that the proposed routing algorithm significantly improves the performance of the WMNs in terms of end-to-end delay and throughput.

Wireless mesh networks (WMN) possess characteristics such as self-healing, self-configuring and self-discovery. Due to this nature WMN has emerged as the most widely used popular network. Since these devices are operated using battery resources, several works have been carried out for minimizing energy consumption during routing process, thereby increasing network lifetime. WMNs are more vulnerable for attackers due to its wide usage. Many works can be found to detect the intruder during routing without considering energy as a metric. There exist possibilities of intruder to attack the battery resource thereby reducing network efficiency in energy-aware routing. Hence in this work we propose a novel approach to detect an intruder by self-monitoring mechanism of node considering metrics such as packet size, data rate, remaining energy and draining rate of a energy resources of a node. The proposed model consists of three modules, namely self-intrusion detector, monitor and evaluator. It detects and helps in making decisions to participate in the network transmission. The working of the model is analyzed and shows that the proposed model detects intruder effectively, thereby resulting in increase of WMN efficiency.

Anypath routing is proposed to improve the performance of wireless networks by exploiting the spatial diversity and broadcast nature of the wireless medium. In this paper, we study anypath routing in wireless networks with directional antennas, and propose DART (Directional Anypath RouTing), a crosslayer design of MAC and routing layers. For the routing layer, we propose two shortest directional anypath routing algorithms based on two antenna models. Our routing algorithms are simple and fast, thus are suitable for implementation in practical protocols. For the MAC layer, we present a directional anycast MAC, which is an enhancement to the IEEE 802.11 MAC, making DART suitable for integration into current systems. Simulation results show that DART can significantly reduce the packet transmission delay.

Field Based Routing (FBR) is the next promising class of routing algorithms especially for wireless mesh networks. The inherent nature of shared medium wireless mesh networks, however, poses fundamental challenges to the design of effective routing policies that are optimal with respect to speed, time and resource utilization. In this paper, globally optimized routing algorithm for multiple subscribers in wireless mesh networks is proposed. Mesh network with multiple nodes will serve as an environment that optimizes some global utility function limited by the mobile nodes position in underlying MAC (Media Access Control) layer. By solving the optimization problem, the network is brought to a point of efficient operation with a certain routing policy for each node. This information will be the operating point that can be used to find better ways adaptive, which is able to steer the network towards the optimal routing. Global optimization of FBR is depicted through path estimation using PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization).

Efficient multicasting over Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is challenging due to dynamic and multi-hop wireless communication among multicast group members. Multicast Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (MAODV) protocol is a tree based multicast routing protocol that enables dynamic, self-starting, multi-hop routing between participating mobile nodes wishing to join or participate in a multicast group in Wireless Mesh Network (WMN). The mobility of mobile nodes often causes link breakage in the tree-based protocols which sometime results in tree partitioning and poor performance. In MAODV, when a broken link is detected between two nodes on the multicast tree, the node downstream to the break is responsible for initiating the repair of the broken link. After link repair, it is likely that the previous distance between the nodes (nodes downstream to the link breakage) and the group leader will not remain same. The shortest path from the group leader to the nodes downstream to the node which initiates link breakage is not ensured. Moreover, if the node attempting to repair a tree link break does not receive a response after certain attempts, it assumes that the multicast tree is not repairable currently and this leads to tree partitioning. In this paper, an improved link repair technique is proposed which ensures shortest path from any node to the group leader. Simulation results demonstrate significant improvement in performance metrics compared to standard MAODV.

To support reliable multicast routing in wireless mesh networks, it is important to protect multicast sessions against link or node failures. The issue of protecting multicast sessions in wireless mesh networks is a new problem to the best of our knowledge. In this paper, we propose a resilient forwarding mesh approach for protecting a multicast session in wireless mesh networks. Utilizing the wireless broadcast advantage, a resilient forwarding mesh effectively establishes two node disjoint paths for each source-destination pair. This allows a multicast session to be immune from any single link or intermediate node failure. We introduce four heuristic algorithms to obtain approximate solutions that seek to minimize the number of required broadcast transmissions. We evaluate the performance of these heuristic algorithms against the optimal resilient forwarding mesh (ORFM) obtained by solving an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation of the problem. Experimental results demonstrate that one of these heuristic algorithms, which we call the minimal disjoint mesh algorithm (MDM), performs sufficiently close to ORFM. Besides, we find that the resilient forwarding mesh approach provides efficient 1+ 1 protection (Pioro and Medhi, 2004) to the multicast session without incurring much additional overhead on a single minimal cost multicast tree