Agent-based multicast opportunistic routing protocol for wireless networks

Abstract

Opportunistic routing techniques achieve high throughput rates for the feeble and lossy links in wireless networks. Opportunistic Routing (OR) is a broadcast based technique widely used in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) that uses the relay node negotiation and link attributes to forward the data in the network. Multiple retransmissions in opportunistic routing increase the communication overhead in the network. Hence, node scheduling and network coding techniques are used to reduce the rate of re-transmissions in the network. In this article, we present a novel approach using Agent-based Multicast Opportunistic Routing Protocol (Agent-based MORP) to reduce the load of the source node by re-establishing the links with multicast member nodes using opportunistic link attributes of the network. The proposed protocol elects the maximum trusted relay node as the agent node to transfer the long-awaited data packets towards the destination. Agent-based MORP uses the stateless approach, where the forwarding nodes are divided into probable relay regions, and the routing paths are established on demand. The proposed protocol limits the number of re-transmissions and saves the energy in the network. Simulation results indicate that the proposed Agent-based MORP reduces the control overhead and improves the performance of opportunistic routing in wireless networks.