Wireless Mesh Routing Protocols For Health Communication Systems1

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) consist of mesh routers and mesh clients. Mesh routers have minimal mobility and form the backbone of WMNs, while mesh clients can be either stationary or mobile, and can form a client mesh network among themselves and with mesh routers. WMNs are characterized by dynamic self-organization, self-configuration and self-healing to enable flexible integration, quick deployment, easy maintenance, low cost, high scalability and reliable services. WMNs may be also used to improve the performance of multi-hop ad-hoc networks, Wireless local area networks (WLANs) and Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMANs). One of the factors that influence the performance of WMNs is the routing protocol that is used. Many routing protocols for WMNs can be found in the literature. However, not all these protocols are suitable for health communication systems. In this paper, based on the operational requirements of the health applications, we classify several routing protocols for wireless mesh networks and highlight their advantages and performance issues when they are used in healthcare