Quick blockage discovery and recovery in multi-hop routing

An apparatus for wireless communication in a network, the apparatus comprising:

• (a) a wireless communication circuit configured for wirelessly communicating directly, or through one or more hops, with at least one other wireless communication circuit;
• (b) a processor coupled to said wireless communication circuit within a station configured for operating on a wireless network;
• (c) a non-transitory memory storing instructions executable by the processor;
• and
• (d) wherein said instructions, when executed by the processor, perform steps comprising:
• (i) transmitting route discovery messages to neighboring stations when establishing a route that enables communication over multiple hops;
• (ii) calculating a link metric indicating the desirability of a link in a routing path, upon receipt of a route discovery message, with a neighbor station that transmitted the route discovery message;
• (iii) responding to reception of a route discovery message by propagating route reply messages to neighbor stations until one or more route reply messages, through one or more paths, is received by an originating station as the station which originally transmitted the route discovery messages;
• (iv) detecting blockage conditions along a route between a source station and a destination station and performing local actions to select another route if it is available, followed by communicating route status information to one or more neighbor stations, with each station proactively assuring that its routing table entries are up-to-date and that multiple next-hop options are reachable and ready to be deployed at any time;
• and
• (v) sending one or more routing request update messages to neighboring stations, exclusive of stations which are reachable, when either primary or backup next-hop stations are not reachable towards finding a replacement for the station that is not reachable.

A method of performing wireless communication in a network, comprising steps of:

• (a) transmitting route discovery messages from a wireless communication circuit configured for wirelessly communicating to neighboring stations when establishing a route that enables communication over multiple hops;
• (b) calculating a link metric indicating the desirability of a link in a routing path, upon receipt of a route discovery message, with a neighbor station that transmitted the route discovery message;
• (c) responding to reception of a route discovery message by propagating route reply messages to neighboring stations until one or more route reply messages, through one or more paths, is received by an originating station as the station which originally transmitted the route discovery messages;
• and
• (d) detecting blockage conditions along a route between a source station and a destination station and performing local actions to select another route if it is available, followed by communicating route status information to one or more neighbor stations, with each station proactively assuring that its routing table entries are up-to-date and that multiple next-hop options are reachable and ready to be deployed at any time.