A routing protocol for mobile terminals in an ad hoc network with established network

The expansion of a communication area and the provision of services to wide districts can be expected if ad hoc networks are connected to established networks. In this environment, two types of routes exist between mobile stations that compose ad hoc networks: routes using wireless links only and routes via base station and the established networks. However, most routing protocols decide a route simply by the minimum hop counts between mobile stations without taking the differences of communication performance between the established network and ad hoc networks into account. This paper presents a new routing protocol that uses simple formulas to decide which route is effective, a route using wireless links only, or a route via the established networks. The formulas are derived from the results of simulation on the communication performance of some routes that uses IEEE802.11b as wireless links and Ethernet of 100 Mb/s as wired links. The performance of our proposed routing protocol, which is realized as an extension of ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV), is evaluated by simulation. The results show that the proposed routing protocol is effective especially under a high data rate situation compared with AODV. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 90(10): 47– 56, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.20363