Finding stable routes in mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is an infrastructureless and highly dynamic network. Routes in such a network may fail frequently because of node mobility or other issues. Stability therefore can be an important element in the design of routing protocols. Stable routes, also called long-lived routes, can be discovered and used to reduce the overhead resulted from route maintenance in ad hoc networks. We propose the long-lived route prediction (LRP) scheme to discover stable routes. The LRP scheme is distributed and predicts long-lived routes based on the history of link lifetime. Furthermore, we apply the LRP scheme to both the open area and urban area using simulation. Simulation results show that the LRP scheme can indeed discover stable routes to reduce route rediscovery, and can be much more efficient and scalable.