Abstract: Because of the unique characteristics over wireless mesh networks, such as multi-radio multi-channel and static nodes, traditional Ad hoc network routing protocols can not work very well, which are based on the condition of “shortest path”. This paper presents a novel routing protocol named MEIL for wireless mesh networks. It designs routing metrics according to the wireless link loss, interference between channels and the load of wireless mesh nodes. MEIL chooses the route with lower loss, smaller interference and lighter load, so it can improve the throughput of the network efficiently. The simulation results show that MEIL performs much better than the AODV routing protocol and the DSDV+ETX algorithm under the circumstances of various services, and it is suitable for wireless mesh networks.

Key words: wireless mesh networks, routing protocol, routing metric, MEIL