Adaptive Routing in Dynamic Ad-Hoc Network

The dynamics of an ad hoc network are a challenge to protocol design because mobility of nodes leads to unstable routing, and consequently flows encounter fluctuations in resource availability on various paths during the lifetime of a session. This has become serious, especially for those protocols based on single-path reservation, as frequent reservation and restoration of reservation-based flows increase the instability of connections. Advances in wireless research are focusing more and more on the adaptation capability of routing protocols. These protocols are interrelated to each other among various performance measures such as those related to topological changes (link breakages, node mobility, etc.) and quality of service (QoS) parameters (load, delay, etc). Sometimes, dynamic ad hoc networks resemble a dense ad hoc network. At other times, they resemble a delay tolerant network. Many real networks follow the structure of dynamic ad hoc networks. Military networks, wildlife tracking sensor networks, and vehicle networks are some of these examples. In dynamic ad hoc networks, conventional routing schemes fail when the network characteristics do not fall into their applicable scenarios. Previous research has proposed a variety of routing schemes for each specific network scenario. For instance, distributed routing tables are built for efficient multi-hop, single copy routing in static and dense networks. Mobility assisted multi-copy routings are proposed in sparse networks where contemporary paths might not exist. With the advantages of the existing schemes in mind, we introduce a new routing scheme, Adaptive Routing in Dynamic ad hoc networks (AROSD), which is a seamless integration of several existing schemes.