On-demand routing in disrupted environments

Abstract

While current on-demand routing protocols are optimized to take into account unique features of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) such as frequent topology changes and limited battery life, they often do not consider the possibility of intermittent connectivity that may lead to temporary partitions. In this work, we introduce the Space-Content-adaptive-Time Routing (SCaTR) framework, which enables data delivery in the face of both temporary and long-lived MANET partitions. SCaTR takes advantage of past connectivity information to effectively route traffic towards destinations when no direct route from the source exists. We show through simulations that, when compared to traditional on-demand protocols, as well as Epidemic routing, SCaTR increases delivery ratio with lower signaling overhead in a variety of network scenarios with intermittent connectivity. We also show that SCaTR performs as well as on-demand routing in scenarios that are well-connected, and/or have no mobility predictability (e.g., scenarios with random mobility). © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2007.