Electric-field-based routing: a reliable framework for routing in MANETs

Abstract

Constructing multipath routes in MANETs is important for providing reliable delivery, load balancing, and bandwidth aggregation. However, popular multipath routing approaches fail to produce spatially disjoint routes in a simple and cost-effective manner, and existing single-path approaches cannot be easily modified to produce multiple disjoint routes. In this paper we propose Electric-Field-Based Routing (EFR) as a reliable framework for routing in MANETs by applying the concept of electric field lines. Our location-based protocol naturally provides spatially disjoint routes based on the shapes of these lines. The computation is highly localized and requires no explicit coordination among routes. EFR can also be easily extended to offer load-balancing, bandwidth aggregation, and power management. Through simulation, EFR shows a higher delivery ratio and lower overhead under high mobility, high network loads, and network failures compared to popular multipath and location-based schemes. EFR also demonstrates high resiliency to DoS attacks.