A Stable Adaptive Optimization for DSR Protocol in Ad Hoc Networks

Ad hoc networks are autonomous systems composed of mobile hosts that are free to move around arbitrarily. Rather than relying on a network infrastructure to perform routing in an Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) each mobile host serves as a router to forward packets originated from other nodes. Proactive protocols are table driven, find routes between all source-destination pairs regardless of the actual need for such routes. Reactive protocols, on the other hand, are based on the reduction of the routing load by initiating new routing activities only in the presence of data packets in need of a route. Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is a reactive routing method for ad-hoc wireless networks that floods route requests when the route is needed. DSR is appealing for ad hoc networks as a reactive routing protocol because of the lower routing overhead. However its performance is not ideal for the high dynamic ad hoc networks. As an optimization for the current DSR, a new adaptive routes selection scheme based on the stability of nodes was proposed in this paper, considered joint hop count and node stability. As shown with the simulations results, the enhanced-DSR has higher throughput and less end-to-end packets delay.