Increasing the network performance using multi-path routing mechanism with load balance

Abstract

Research on multi-path routing protocols to provide improved throughput and route resilience as compared with single-path routing has been explored in details in the context of wired networks. However, multi-path routing mechanisms have not been explored thoroughly in the domain of ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a new routing protocol which increases the network throughput. The protocol is a multi-path routing protocol with a load balance policy. The simulations show a significant improvement in terms of connection throughput and end-to-end delay, when compared to single-path routing. The second significant contribution of this paper is a theoretical analysis allowing to compare reactive single-path and multi-path routing with load balance mechanisms in ad hoc networks, in terms of overheads, traffic distribution and connection throughput. The results reveal that multi-path routing (using a load balance policy) provides better performance than reactive single-path routing in terms of congestion and connection throughput, provided that the average route length is smaller than certain upper bounds which are derived and depend on parameters specific to the network. These upper bounds are very crucial because they can be taken into account as constraints in the route discovery mechanism so that the multi-path routing protocol is guaranteed to lead to an increase performance than a simple single-path one. Also, our analysis provide some insight into choosing the right trade-off between increased overheads and better performance. We show in particular that for certain networks, a multi-path routing strategy is not worth considering.