A power controlled interference aware routing protocol for dense multi-hop wireless networks

A key issue impacting the performance of multi-hop wireless networks is the interference among neighboring nodes. In this paper, we propose a novel and practical interference aware metric, termed as Network Allocation Vector Count (NAVC), to estimate the effects of the interference on the average delay and the available bandwidth. This metric can be easily applied to routing protocols designed for 802.11 based multi-hop networks with no modification to the current 802.11 protocol. The design of NAVC as a metric for the AODV [32] routing protocol, as well as a metric for transmit power control, are described in detail. Our simulation results reveal that the NAVC-driven AODV can greatly improve its performance compared to those protocols based on hop-count. For scenarios of densely deployed nodes, the throughput improvement is often a factor near two, indicating that NAVC is more useful as networks grow denser. Moreover, the network lifetime can be notably prolonged when the NAVC is employed to conduct transmit power control. Our approach is essential for emerging applications such as wireless sensor networks where the interference is heavy and the energy is severely constrained.