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A Survey of Routing Metrics in Cluster-Based Routing Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks
Adebanjo Adekiigbe, Kamalrulnizam Abu Bakar and Simeon Olumide Ogunnusi
Abstract Routing metrics that will strike a balanced tradeoff between low computational overheads and high throughput, low delay, load balancing and low interference still remain a greater challenge to researchers in wireless networks. This paper considered various routing metrics that were used in routing protocols of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) and identified the effect of each of these routing metrics on the performance of the protocols to deliver high throughput. The paper show case the performance comparism of cluster based routing protocols to expose the need for more robust network routing metrics to satisfy the requirement of WMNs for a highly scalable network without scarifying the quality of service (QoS) in the network. Index Terms Metrics, Networks, Overheads, Performance, Protocols, Routing.

1 INTRODUCTION

wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communication network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. WMNs are dynamically self-organized and self-configured, with the nodes in the network automatically establishing an ad hoc network and maintaining the mesh connectivity [1]. WMN is formed by a set of gateways, mesh routers, and mesh clients. Gateways and mesh routers form the backbone of the network, where mobility is reduced. Wireless Mesh Networks are composed of wireless access points (routers) that facilitate the connectivity and intercommunication of wireless clients through multi-hop wireless paths, the mesh may be connected to the Internet through gateway routers. The access points are considered as the nodes of mesh; they may be heterogeneous and connected in a hierarchical fashion. Unlike MANETs, end hosts and routing nodes are distinct. Routers are usually stationary. In this type of networks, the nodes automatically establish and maintain mesh connectivity among themselves (creating an ad hoc network). This brings many advantages, such as low up-front cost, easy network maintenance, robustness, resilient and reliable service coverage [31]. WMNs are expected to improve significantly the performance and circumvent the limitations of many ad hoc networks, including wireless local area networks (WLANs), wireless personal area networks (WPANs), and wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs). Other application areas include community networks, enterprise networks, home networks, public safety, rescue and recovery operation.

Assuming that these networks are usually multi-hop, in order to forward data packet from one node to other nodes, each node has to make routing decisions. Consequently, certain nodes or links can be heavily loaded while some nodes/links can be seldom used [34]. This may lead to an undesirable situation in which the best paths eventually degrade due to excessive load, consequently resulting in suboptimal performance. This scenario may be avoided if the best routing decision is taken for balancing traffic among various paths by using appropriate routing metrics. This paper provides an overview of resource management issues in WMNs and particularly focuses on the choice of routing metrics. Efforts are made to evaluate the need for developing new routing mechanisms tailored for WMNs by considering unique characteristics of this network. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section II provides general characteristics of routing metrics. Section III discusses different routing in wireless networks. In section IV various clustered based routing protocols use in WMNs were discussed, section V examined the features of routing metrics, while section VI discusses existing clustered based routing protocol metrics. In section VII, conclusion was drawn on the need to enhance the existing routing metrics for WMNs and our future research direction is highlighted.

A. Adekiigbe is a Ph.D Research Student at the Department of Computer Systems and Communication, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor Bahru K. Abu Bakar, is an Assoc. Prof. of Computer Science at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor Bahru O.S Ogunnusi is a Ph.D student at the Dept. of Computer Science, The Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria.

2 CHARACTERISTICS OF WMN FROM A ROUTING VIEWPOINT

Since WMNs display exceptional characteristics that differentiate them from other wireless networks so will its routing protocols be to gain higher throughput and low

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delay. The following are some main difference concern when compare with other wireless networks.

2.1 Network Topology WMNs has a fixed wireless backbone which is made of up of fixed routers and it does not suffer from energy constraints [3, 4]; these differentiate WMNs from other network infrastructure. Communication is performed through multihop wireless transmissions as was found in MANET, but unlike MANETs [15], node mobility in the backbone infrastructure is not frequent (i.e the network is quasi static). 2.2 Traffic Pattern WMNs data transmission is primarily between the mobile nodes and the network gateway, this traffic pattern is similar to WSNs that transmit form sensor nodes to sentinel. In MANETs, traffic can flow between any pair of nodes. The distributed mobility infrastructure on each node serves as the server for the mobile client to establish communication channel that is based on Transmission Control Protocol/internet Protocol (TCP/IP) sockets [28, 29] 2.3 Inter-path Interference WMNs link allow point-to-multipoint communication if it uses omnidirectional antennas whereas wired communication is point-to-point. Hence, a wireless network communication between two nodes can impact the transmission of neighboring nodes which may result in problems of hidden and exposed terminals [33]. 2.4 Link Capacity Path fading, link failure, node failure and high bit error rate are some of what makes WMNs differ from wired network. Link capacity can vary over time due to the nature of wireless communications that are sensitive to surrounding interference. Whenever different technologies are used in the same frequency band, the problem is even more severe. 2.5 Channel Diversity The technique of channel diversity in routing process can be introduced in WMNs which may prove to be difficult in other wireless network like MANET due to mobility of nodes and power constraint issues in WSNs. This approach greatly reduces inter-nodes interference and increase the overall throughput of the network.

ROUTING IN WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS

Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic, while routing protocols are used in finding and maintenance of routes between source and destination nodes [32]. All characteristics enumerated in the previous section must be vigorously pursued when designing routing protocols for WMNs for it to perform optimally. Routing protocols can be classified into three major types based on the route

creation process: i.e. proactive routing, reactive routing and hybrid routing [5]. Proactive routing methods maintain routes to all nodes, including nodes to which no packets are sent. Such methods react to topology changes, even if no traffic is affected by the changes. They are also called table-driven methods. This type of protocols maintains fresh lists of destinations and their routes by periodically distributing routing tables throughout the network. The main advantage of this category of protocols is that hosts can quickly obtain route information and quickly establish a session while the main disadvantages of such algorithms are that it requires lots of respective amount of data for maintenance, it exhibit slow reaction on restructuring and failures, hence may not be practicable in large dynamic networks. Reactive methods are based on demand for data transmission. Routes between hosts are determined only when they are explicitly needed to forward packets. Reactive methods are also called on-demand methods. They can significantly reduce routing overhead when the traffic is lightweight and the topology changes less dramatically, since they do not need to update route information periodically and do not need to find and maintain routes on which there is no traffic. However, due to the delays incurred in the process of finding suitable routes and the wait for the replies, this approach may not be suitable for operations that require immediate route availability. Hybrid methods combine proactive and reactive methods to find efficient routes, without much control overhead. The approach is aim at providing an optimal solution by combining the best properties of both proactive and reactive algorithms. It employs diverse routing protocols in different part of the infrastructure WMNs i.e. reactive protocols for the ad hoc network area while proactive protocols are employed in wireless backbone. We summarized the three routing methods discussed in this section in the Table I. WMNs have not got a fair share of research outputs in terms of development of routing protocols. Some of the approaches that have been considered are MIT (SrcRR) [6] and MeshNetworks Scalable Routing (MSR) [7] which are newly designed protocols specifically tailored for WMNs. MeshNetworks Scalable Routing is a hybrid routing protocol, supposedly able to support highly mobile users and to dynamically adapt to networks conditions. The protocol is not in the public domain that made it to be more difficult to verify the claims by its developers. SrcRR is a variation of DSR using the expected transmission time as a metric instead of the number of hops. In other words, the shortest paths are determined based on least packet loss. Other works have focused on enhancing existing routing protocols with new routing metrics more appropriate for WMNs [10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. Indeed, the fixed wireless backbone allows a better estimation of the link quality through regular measurements. It is also possible to introduce channel diversity in the network infrastructure so as to reduce interference and increase overall throughput [8, 9]. The three routing methods discussed thus far are summarized in Table I to clearly display their

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differences.

TABLE I. SUMMARY OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF ROUTING

TECHNIQUES

4 CLUSTER-BASED ROUTING PROTOCOLS

Fault Tolerant
Weak Strong Weak

Maintains fresh lists of destination and routes periodically: Either as Source Routing or Hop-by-hop Routing

High overhead even when the traffic is lightweight

Average Speed of Convergence

Table Driven

Proactive

Minimal

OLSR

ganize themselves into upper level clusters, and so on. Inside a cluster, nodes broadcast their link state information to all others. The CH summarizes link state information of its cluster and sends the information to its neighboring CHs via gateway nodes. Nodes in upper level hierarchical clusters flood the network topology information they have obtained to the nodes in the lower level clusters. Hierarchical address is assigned to every node in HSR. The hierarchical address reflects the network topology and provides enough information for packet deliveries in the network. In HSR, logical addresses reflect the group property of mobile nodes and hierarchical addresses reflect their physical locations. Combining these addressing schemes can improve adaptability of the routing algorithm.

Scalability

Method of Routing

Convergence of Operation

Overhead Cost

Example

Routing Type

Alias

In an attempt to solve the problems of scalability in WMNs clustering approach to routing protocols was developed. Apart from the fact that it tackles scalability issues, it could be energy efficient in finding an available route to a destination [35]. In cluster based routing protocols, each cluster has a cluster-head (CH), all the nodes in the cluster send their data packets to CH, and then CH after aggregation send data packets to destination [30].

4.1The Cluster-head Gateway Switch Routing (CGSR) The Cluster-head Gateway Switch Routing (CGSR) [24] is one of the very few clustered based routing algorithms that was developed. It is a hierarchical routing protocol. The cluster structure improves performance of the routing protocol because it makes available operational relationship and traffic management. Besides routing information collection, update and distribution, cluster construction and cluster-head selection algorithms are important components of cluster based routing protocols. This routing protocol makes use of blocking metric value to improve its performance over some previous routing protocols. CGSR uses similar proactive routing mechanism as DSDV. 4.2 The Hierarchical State Routing (HSR) The Hierarchical State Routing (HSR) [26] is a multi-level cluster-based hierarchical routing protocol. In HSR, mobile nodes are grouped into clusters while a CH is elected for each cluster. The CHs of low level clusters again or-

4.3 Cluster Based Routing Protocol (CBRP) In the Cluster Based Routing Protocol (CBRP) [27], nodes are divided into clusters and the clustering algorithm is performed when a node joins the network. Earlier, a node is in the "undecided" state and the undecided node initiates the joining operation by setting a timer and broadcasts a Hello message. If a cluster-head receives the Hello message, it replies with a triggered Hello message. Receiving the triggered Hello message, the undecided node changes its state to "member" state. If the undecided node has bi-directional links to some neighbors but does not receive a message from a CH before the local timer generates a timeout, it makes itself a CH. Otherwise, the node remains in undecided mode and repeats the joining operation later. Every node maintains a neighbor table in which it stores the information about link states either uni-directional or bi-directional and the state of its neighbors. In addition to the information of all members in its cluster, a CH keeps information of its neighboring clusters, which includes the CHs of neighboring clusters and gateway nodes connecting it to neighboring clusters. It utilizes the shortening path metrics for performance optimization since CBRP uses a source routing scheme, a node gets all information about the route when receiving a packet. To reduce the hop number and adapt to network topology changes, nodes exploit route shortening to choose the most distant neighboring node in a route as next hop. It also exploited local repair as another optimization method where a node has a packet to forward and the next hop is not reachable, it checks the routing information contained in the packet. If the next hop or the hop after next hop in the route is reachable through one of its neighbors, the packet is forwarded through the new route. Most of the proposals for WMNs routing shared one or some of the following performance metrics- Hop counts [23], Blocking Metric [24], ETX [16], WCETT [9], ETT [16], EETT [17], WCETT-LB [18], MIC [19], ALARM [20], iAWARE [21], Adv-iAWARE[10], Adv-ILA [10], LAETT [22].

Route between hosts are determined only when needed

Slow Speed of Convergence

Low overhead when the traffic is light weight Average overhead cost

Employs diverse routing protocols to different part of the network

Balanced Hybrid

Rapid Convergence

Scalable

EIGRP

Hybrid

Not Scalable

On-Demand

AODV and DSR

Reactive

5 FEATURES OF ROUTING METRICS

In a data communication network, if two nodes are not

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connected directly by a communication link, their mes- 6.1 Hop Count sages to each other need to be forwarded by intermediate The commonest metric in wireless multihop networks is nodes. Finding a good path between two nodes in which hop count [23]. This metric is appropriate for ad hoc netto send messages in data communication networks is a works because new paths must be rapidly found whereas fundamental problem, called routing [32]. In a traditional high-quality routes may not be found in due time. This is computer network, there are nodes dedicated to the important in ad hoc networks because of user mobility. routing task, called routers. Applications on hosts com- However, the route with maximum distance between municate with servers and messages are forwarded by hops may cause severe packet loss which will trigger unrouters to their destinations. In contrast to traditional necessary retransmissions of packets and consequently computer networks, wireless ad-hoc networks do not dis- waste network resources. tinguish between hosts, servers, and routers. In wireless ad-hoc networks, nodes are not only application hosts, 6.2 Blocking Metric but also function as routers to forward messages for other Blocking metric [24] was simple improvement on hop nodes that are not within direct wireless transmission count in order to account for the interference along a cerrange of each other. For any routing protocols to perform tain path. The interference level referred to as Blocking optimally in any networks, the characteristics of such Value is defined as the number of neighbors a node is networks must be explicitly examined. [2] explored chainterfering with. Each node is therefore weighted accordracteristics of WMNs in various perspectives such as gening to this Blocking Value. The Blocking Metric of a path eral perspectives that takes into consideration transmisis then defined as the sum of all the blocking values along sion medium, network deployment, wireless technology the path. The paths with minimum cost will consequently and network infrastructure to support user mobility, be used to carry the traffic flows. However, the minimum while the second characteristic perspective of WMN as cost of the path does not guarantee the link quality which presented by [2] is a routing perspective. The characterismay adversely affect the QoS along the path. tics of WMNs that are different from traditional networks pose two specific challenges in routing. First, since there are neither dedicated routers nor persistent routing data- 6.3 Expected Transmission Count bases, WMNs require fully distributed routing protocols. Expected Transmission Count (ETX) was proposed in [16] Secondly, the topology of a WMN can change frequently is defined as the number of transmissions required to and unpredictably. A routing protocol for this type of successfully deliver a packet over a wireless link .The network must be well adapted to the constant changes of weight of a path is define as the summation of the ETX's topology. These characteristics make routing in WMNs an of all links along the path. ETX uses the underlying packet loss probability, both forward and reverse, denoted by interesting and challenging problem. The routing metric design plays a crucial role in p f and p r respectively to measure the expected number of achieving good performance while the best routing metric transmissions including re-transmissions. An isotonic may also differ in its performance [33]. For example, in routing metric property was enshrined into ETX which WMNs, the routing metric design has to take the link lev- guarantees easy calculation of minimum weight paths el signal quality into account for better end-to-end per- and loop-free routing under all routing protocols. Neverformance. Routing protocols for WMNs, while providing theless, ETX suffers a drawback of not considering intera good end-to-end performance, should also consume ference or the fact that different links may have different minimum bandwidth for setting up paths. Hence, there is transmission rates and it does not also consider data also a greater need to identify the criteria and perfor- packet sizes, hence the performance of the network is mance metrics against which existing routing protocols very low unless when operating with a very low data from ad hoc, sensor, and WMNs can be evaluated. This rates. ETX is denoted by: can then serve as a basis for deriving the key design fea- ETX (1) = = 1 (1 p ) k *s k tures for efficient routing in wireless mesh networks.

( )

6 ROUTING METRICS IN CLUSTERED ALGORITHMS

Routing Metrics is a property of a route in computer networks which consisting of any value used by routing algorithms to determine whether one route will perform better than another [25]. The following are the requirements for routing metrics: Time varying channels and resulting variable packet loss ratios, Link capacity and Interference. Here we discuss various routing metrics employed in some clustered based routing protocols.

6.4 Expected Transmission Time Expected Transmission Time (ETT) routing metric, proposed in [16] was to improve ETX by considering the differences in link transmission rates. The ETT of a link k is defined as the expected MAC layer duration for a successful transmission of a packet at link k. The weight of a path i is simply the summation of the ETT's of the links on the path. The correlation between the ETT of a link k and ETX can be expressed as:

ETTk = ETX k * s

where s is the packet size and b k is the transmission rate of link k. Basically, the introduction of b k into the weight of a path has made the ETT metric to capture the impact

bk

(2)

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of link capacity on the performance of the path. As akin to ETX, ETT is also isotonic. Nonetheless, the remaining drawback of ETT is that it still does not fully capture the intra-flow and inter-flow interference in the network. For example, ETT may choose a path that only uses one channel, even though a path with more diversified channels has less intra-flow interference and hence higher throughput exist.

fined as follows:

IRU l ETTl N l =

(6)

6.5 Weighted Cumulative Expected Transmission Time Weighted Cumulative Expected Transmission Time (WCETT) [9] was designed mainly to obtain a link cost metric that represents the following properties: (i) loss rate and the bandwidth of a link, (ii) a nonnegative link cost, and (iii) consideration of the co-channel interference. Let the ETT of a link i between nodes x and y be denoted by ETT i , assuming a n hop path and that the system has a total of k channels, X j is define in (3):

w1 if CH ( prev ( i ) ) CH ( i ) CSCi = w2 if CH ( prev ( i ) ) = CH ( i ) 0 w1 < w2

(7)

The major advantage of this metric is that it takes both interflow and intra-flow interference into considerations, while it can be made isotonic if it is decomposed into virtual nodes by using Dijkstra's algorithm as a minimum weight path finding algorithms. However, the degree of interference is not precisely captured. It is isotonic on condition of applying Dijkstra algorithm which may impose additional computational overheads to the network.

= ETTi Xj

1 j k

(3)

WCETT is taken as max(X j ), using the above notation, the WCETT can be derived as:

WCETT = ETTi + * max X j (1 ) *

i =1 1i k

(4)

where ETTi is the expected transmission time (ETT) of link i in a path, is a tunable parameter that ranges from 0 to 1, and X i is the sum of the transmission times on a particular channel and captures the intra-flow interference. The shortcomings of the ETT was addressed by WCETT in that it captures the intra-flow interference of a path since it essentially gives low weights to paths that have more diversified channel assignments on their links and hence lower intra-flow interference. Yet, WCETT has two limitations, it does not explicitly consider the effects of inter-flow interference, although it does capture intraflow interference, hence, WCETT may route flows to through dense areas where congestion is more likely and may even result in starvation of some nodes due to congestion. Again, despite lack of consideration of inter-flow interference, WCETT suffers efficient algorithm that can calculate the minimum weight path based on WCETT since it is not isotonic.

6.7 Interference Aware Routing Metric The interference aware (iAWARE) [21] is a routing metric that captures the effect of variation in link loss ratio, transmission rate differences and inter-flow and intraflow interference. The interference ratio (IR) for link i between nodes u and v is defined as shown in (7), where SINR is the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio while SNR is signal-to-noise ratio.

IRi ( u ) =

SIN Ri ( u ) SN Ri ( u ) P (v) u N

where

SN Ri ( u ) = SIN Ri ( u ) =

N + w ( u ) v ( w ) P ( w ) u

P (v) u

(8)

IR i =Interference ratio for a link i is the value between two nodes u and v which is defined as follows.

IRi = min ( IRi ( u ) , IRi ( v ) )

iAWARE j = ETT j

(9)

6.6 Metric of Interference and Channel Switching IR j Metric of interference and channel switching (MIC) [19] was designed to support load balanced routing and to = Xj iAWAREi , consider intra-flow and inter-flow interference, in addition to being isotonic. MIC for a path q is defined as conflicting links i on channel j shown in (5).

(10)

1 j k

(11)

MIC ( q )

1 IRU l + node ip CSCi N min ( ETT ) link l p

(5)

iAWARE ( p ) = (1 ) iAWAREi + max X j

i =1 1 j k

(12)

where N is the number of nodes in the network and min(ETT) is the smallest ETT in the network. The other two components of MIC, i.e. IRU (Interference-aware Resource Usage) and CSC (Channel Switching Cost) are de 2011 Journal of Computing Press, NY, USA, ISSN 2151-9617

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TABLE II. SUMMARIZED PERFORMANCE COMPARISM OF ROUTING METRICS FOR WMNS

Metrics Used in Protocol Parameter Considered Metric Intent Metric Overhead Advantage Disadvantage

Hop count

DSDV

Node distance

Shortest hop to destination

Very Low

Simple to implement

ETX

OLSR daemeon, DSDV

ETT

OLSR

No of successful packet received by neighbor node in both direction Amends ETX to different PHY rates and data packets sizes

Tend to find robust routes with fewest expected number of transmission and retransmission Capturing the impact of link capacity on the performance of the path

Average

Average

Blocking Value

DSDV, CGSR

Weight of blocking value Calculated based on ETT and data rate

Improvement to account for interference along a path The path metric should explicitly act for the reduction in throughput due to interference among links that operate on the same channel and take both loss rate and the data rate of link into account Design to support load balancing routing while also consider intra and inter flow interference

Low

WCETT

Multichannel routing

High

MIC

DSDV, OLSR

iAware

AODV

Improves on WCETT by combining Interference aware resource usage (IRU) and Channel switching cost (CSC) Improves on ETT

High

Designed to be used for Wireless network where hop count fails Increase the throughput of path by measuring the link capacities and increase the performance of network The path with minimum cost used for carrying traffic flow Consider intra flow interference and also improve performance of multiradio multirate wireless networks Consider both intra and inter flow interference, balance of traffic load

High Quality route may not be found, route with maximum distance cause severe packet loss Does not consider links data rate, low Performance except when operating at low rate Not design for multi radio network, does not minimize intra flow interference

Minimum cost path does not guarantee link quality Does not estimate the effective link, not consider interflow interference

Very complex algorithm required

Design to capture the effect of variation in link loss ratio, transmission rate and intra and inter flow interference

Average

Variation in link loss ratio is effectively captured

It gives more weight to ETT compare to interference of the link

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Apart for the fact that iAWARE captures the effect of variation in link loss ratio, differences in transmission rate as well as inter-flow and intra-flow interference, it also adds all advantages of WCETT apart from its handling of interflow interference measurements. It directly measures the average interference generated by neighboring nodes. In another development, the introduction of SINR is a great development for inter-flow interference routing when compared with other ETX based metric such as ETX, WCETT, MIC, and so on. Nevertheless, iAWARE is a nonisotonic routing metric, while it may have lower value when a link has higher IRj than ETTj which will result in the iAWAREj metric choosing a path with lower ETT but higher interference. Table II depicts the summary of some of the metrics considered in this paper. We highlighted in a summarized form the intent of the metrics, i.e. reason for the development of the metrics, in which protocols does the metric applies, what is/are the parameter(s) considered, the overhead imposed by the metrics and some advantages and the disadvantages of the metrics.

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7 CONLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS

In this paper, we surveyed routing metrics in WMNs with particular attention on cluster-based routing protocols. The paper analyses various features of these routing metrics while it also highlight the advantages and some weaknesses of these protocols in other to beams researchers attention to the challenges ahead in having a more scalable and efficient routing protocols for WMNs. Some open issues raised are that some of these metrics work in an ad-hoc manner which may only perform well in limited type of WMNs such as client WMN, again, quality of service (QoS) which is a very important parameter was not captured by these metrics. In all, it was obvious that almost all the routing protocols still lack the adequate metrics to fully satisfy the scalable features required for WMNs while the networks still need a more robust load balancing and efficient channel allocation metrics. As part of our future work, we will focus our attention on modeling efficient metrics for cluster based routing protocol which will pave way for a balanced tradeoff for high throughput, low delay, effective load balancing and low computation overheads in wireless mesh networks.

[6] [7] [8]

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge our unanimous reviewers for their comments and advice. We also thank Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for making available enormous research facilities, while we also acknowledged the support provided by the Federal Polytechnic Ede, Nigeria and Education Trust Fund (ETF), Abuja, Nigeria.
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Adebanjo Adekiigbe is currently a PhD student in the Department of Computer Systems and Communications of the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Systems at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He obtained M.Sc. Computer Science from University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 2003. A member of Pervasive Computing Research Group at UTM, his research interest span across mobile agent and wireless mesh networks. He has published in many reputable journals. Kamalrulnizam Abu Bakar obtained his PhD degree from Aston University (Birmingham, UK) in 2004. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and

member of the Pervasive Computing research group. He involves in several research projects and is the referee for many scientific journals and conferences. His specialization includes mobile and wireless computing, information security and grid computing. Simeon Olumide Ogunnusi is currently a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science of the School of Applied Science at the Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria where he obtained both Bachelor of Technology and Master of Technology respectively. His research interest includes network management and mobile agents among others.

2011 Journal of Computing Press, NY, USA, ISSN 2151-9617