Analysing the behaviour and performance of opportunistic routing protocols in highly mobile wireless ad hoc networks

Abstract

Recent advances in wireless networks have enabled us to deploy and use mobile ad hoc networks for communication between the rescue officers in disaster recovery and reconstruction operations. This highly dynamic network does not require any infrastructure or centralized control. As the topology of the network remain dynamic, severe performance limitations incur with traditional routing strategies. Recently a new routing paradigm known as opportunistic routing protocols have been proposed to overcome these limitations and to provide efficient delivery of data in these highly dynamic ad hoc networks. Using the broadcasting nature of the wireless medium, this latest routing technique tries to address two major issues of varying link quality and unpredictable node mobility in ad hoc networks. Unlike conventional IP forwarding, where an intermediate node looks up a forwarding table for a suitable next hop, opportunistic routing brings in opportunistic data forwarding that allows multiple candidate nodes in the forwarding area to act on the broadcasted data packet. This increases the reliability of data delivery in the network with reduced delay. One of the most important issues that have not been studied so far is the varying performance of opportunistic routing protocols in wireless networks with highly mobile nodes. This research paper analyses and compares the various advantages, disadvantages and the performance of the latest opportunistic routing protocols in wireless ad hoc networks with highly mobile nodes.