Path cost metrics for multi-hop network routing

Future network architectures for mesh networks, sensor networks, and hybrid networks include multiple wireless hops with fixed or mobile routers relaying messages between mobile nodes and access points. The vast literature on routing for ad hoc networks is applicable for route discovery between a mobile node and an access point for these multi-hop networks. However, most ad hoc routing protocols rely upon "least-cost" or "shortest-path" routing, wherein a single metric of hop-count or energy-usage is used to define the path cost. For multi-hop networks, a number of additional metrics should be simultaneously considered for determining path cost. In this paper, we introduce our first step towards combining a number of cost criteria to define path cost during route discovery. Our simulation results indicate that giving simultaneous consideration to hop-count, path-congestion, and energy-usage results in a system performance with greater packet delivery ratio, lower end-to-end delay, lower overhead, and lower per-node energy usage.