Wireless mesh network is a distributed multi-hop relaying network. A large scale wireless mesh network typically has high value of network average path length which results in reduced throughput and increased delay in the network. Average path length can be reduced in the network by implementing a few long-links among the network node-pairs, and thus introduces the small-world characteristics in the wireless mesh networks. However, the conventional routing algorithms are not optimized for small-world wireless mesh networks. In this paper, we propose a Load-aware Non-Persistent small-world longlink Routing (LNPR) algorithm for small-world wireless mesh networks to achieve lower average transmission path length for data transfer sessions among a set of source-node and destinationnode pairs in the network. LNPR uses load balancing strategy to better distribute the network traffic among the normal-links and the non-persistent long-links in the small-world wireless mesh networks for efficient use of long-links which are precious data transmission paths in the network. LNPR provides 58% to 95% improvement in call blocking probability and 23% to 70% in maximum load reduction with increment ranging from only 0.7% to 9% increase in average transmission path length. Small-world wireless mesh networks find numerous applications in rural and community networks for cost-effective communication.
