Quantitative Analysis of HWMP Based Wireless Mesh Networks using NS-3

Abstract

Wireless mesh network deployments are considered as a cost-effective means to provide broadband connectivity to a large population. With an increase in network usage, the network planners need to enhance the existing mesh network to provide additional capacity. This work analyzes the HWMP protocol’s performance with varied grid size, packet size, and number of interfaces / radios. It is observed that HWMP protocol perform well with more number of radios and larger grid size as long as the packet size is limited to 2K bytes. The performance degrades drastically beyond 2K bytes of packets and is not suitable to operate with larger packet sizes.