A new efficient cross-layer relay node selection model for Wireless Community Mesh Networks

•Packet Priority-Oriented routing metric and Packet Priority-oriented QoS routing metric are the first to provide differentiated priorities and service levels to applications with different needs.•PPO considers the application priority.•PP-QoS considers the channel busy level to improve the performance of path selection. Current networking technologies are not perfectly equipped to support Quality of Service (QoS), which is vital for real-time multimedia applications in Wireless Community Mesh Networks (WCNs). Therefore, there is a need to devise innovative routing algorithms to support QoS on top of existing standards. Thus, this paper presents a cross layer relay node selection model for routing protocols in order to offer optimal routes to real-time applications. To the best of our knowledge, our two proposed routing metrics, Packet Priority-Oriented routing metric (PPO) and Packet Priority-oriented QoS routing metric (PP-QoS), are the first to provide differentiated priorities and service levels to applications with different needs. PPO considers the application priority. Moreover, PP-QoS also considers the channel busy level to improve the performance of path selection. The simulation confirms the superiority of the proposed model against a number of existing counterparts. [Display omitted]