A robust routing protocol by a substitute local path in ad hoc networks

Abstract

Ad hoc wireless networks consist of mobile nodes in an area without any centralized access point or existing infrastructure. The network topology changes frequently due to nodes' migrations, signal interferences and power outages. One of the ad hoc network routing protocols is the on-demand routing protocol that establishes a route to a destination node only when it is required by a source node. The overhead of maintenance is low, but it is necessary to reestablish a new route when the routing path breaks down. Several recent papers have studied about ad hoc network routing protocols avoiding the disconnection of the existing route. Each active node on the routing path detects the danger of a link breakage to a downstream node and try to reestablish a new route. The node detects a link problem, try to find a substitute local path before the route breaks down. If the local reestablishment process fails, the route breaks down. In this paper, a robust routing protocol is proposed to increase the success rate of the local route reestablishment and enhance the communication delay performance. The results of computer simulation show that the proposed routing protocol increases system performance. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.