Routing Strategies for Coverage Extension in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The focus of this paper is on routing over heterogeneous networks. We consider a scenario involving both infrastructure and infrastructureless wireless networks, where a set of mobile users are interested in communicating with several access points (APs). Multi-hop routing, possibly over heterogeneous technologies, is exploited to extend the coverage for those users that are not within the transmission range of any APs. We propose a proactive tree-based approach for the dissemination of routing information and the subsequent data forwarding towards the APs. Subsequently, we compare its performance against reactive routing algorithms for ad hoc networks. The network performance is obtained via simulation through careful modeling of the considered radio interfaces. The results indicate the superiority of proactive schemes under moderate/high traffic conditions and motivate further research