In-Depth Study of Potential-Based Routing and New Exploration of Its Scheduling Integration

Industrial wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been widely deployed in various industrial sectors, providing services such as manufacturing process monitoring, equipment control, and sensor data collection. A notable characteristic of industrial WMNs is their distinct traffic pattern, where the majority of traffic flows originate from mesh nodes and are directed towards mesh gateways. In this context, this paper adopts and revisits a routing algorithm known as ALFA (autonomous load-balancing field-based anycast routing), tailored specifically for anycast (one-to-one-of-many) networking in WMNs, where traffic flows can be served through any one of multiple gateways. In essence, the scheme is a hybrid-type routing strategy that leverages the advantages of both back-pressure routing and geographic routing. Notably, its novelty lies in being developed by drawing inspiration from another field, specifically from the movement of charges in an electrostatic potential field. Expanding on the previous work, this paper explores further in-depth discussions that were not previously described, including a detailed description of the analogy between an electrostatic system and a WMN system based on precise mapping perspectives derived from intensive analysis, as well as discussions on anycast, numerical methods employed in devising the ALFA scheme, its characteristics, and complexity. It is worth noting that this paper addresses these previously unexplored aspects, representing significant contributions compared to previous works. As a completely new exploration, a new scheduling strategy is proposed that is compatible with the routing approach by utilizing the potential-based metric not only in routing but also in scheduling. This assigns higher medium access priority to links with a larger potential difference. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed potential-based joint routing and scheduling scheme across various aspects within industrial WMN scenarios.