Route selection in a communications network using combined values of metrics of different characteristics

A method of determining a route in a wireless communications network, comprising the steps of:

• a) broadcasting control packets from a plurality of wireless nodes via a plurality of routes to a local wireless node, each of said control packets containing a first metric value of a first category and a second metric value of a second category, said first and second categories respectively representing transmission quality and hop count of a corresponding one of said routes;
• b) receiving, at said local node, control packets from said plurality of nodes;
• c) determining whether the received control packets are received from upstream nodes or downstream nodes;
• d) if the control packets are received from upstream nodes, updating the first and second metric values of the received control packets and multiplying the second metric value of each of the received control packets by a coefficient of said first category and summing the first metric value and the multiplied second metric value of each of the received control packets to produce a plurality of summed metric values and selecting one of said routes according to said plurality of summed metric values;
• and
• e) if the control packets are received from downstream nodes, multiplying the second metric value of each of the received control packets with a coefficient of said first category and summing the first metric value with the multiplied second metric value of said each control packet to produce a plurality of summed metric values and determining smaller values of the summed metric values corresponding in number to wireless links that can be established from said local wireless node and selecting routes having the detected smaller values of the summed metric values from said plurality of routes,
• wherein the first metric value and the second metric value have different units of measurement.

A network node for a communications network wherein said network node is one of a plurality of interconnected nodes of said network, comprising:

• an interface connected to the network;
• a metric table having a plurality of entries;
• and
• routing control means for broadcasting a control packet to said network via said interface, said control packet containing a first metric value of a first category and a second metric value of a second category, said first and second categories respectively representing transmission quality and hop count of one of a plurality of routes from said network node, receiving said control packets from said plurality of nodes via said interface, storing the first and second metric values of each of the received control packets in respective entries of said metric table, multiplying, in each of said entries, the second metric value with a coefficient of said first category and summing the first metric value and the multiplied second metric value to produce a plurality of summed metric values and selecting at least one of said routes according to said plurality of summed metric values,
• wherein the first metric value and the second metric value have different units of measurement.