A routing method based on cost matrix in ad hoc networks

Abstract

An ad hoc network does not rely on an existing infrastructure and it is organized as a network with nodes that act as hosts and routers to transmit packets. With its frequent change in topology, an ad hoc network does not rely on routing methods for pre-established wired networks; it requires a special routing method. In this paper, we introduce an agent based routing algorithm. The agent node creates the knowledge of topology in the form of an adjacency cost matrix. Based on this adjacency cost matrix, we can calculate the shortest cost matrix and the next hop matrices, in which each entry lists the minimum cost and routes between nodes. These matrices are distributed to the other nodes by the agent. Based on the shortest cost matrix and the next hop matrices, each node decides a shortest path to a destinaion without the process of path discovery. Because every node doesn't need the information of network topology, the overhead of the control messages of our proposed method is considered to be small, compared with the overhead of the control messages that is required in the general table-driven routing protocols. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.