Mobility adaptive hybrid routing for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) require a dynamic and efficient routing protocol that can respond quickly to network topology changes. Ad hoc routing protocols for MANETs are classified into: (a) proactive, (b) reactive and (c) hybrid approaches. In general, proactive routing is more suitable for a stationary network, while reactive routing is better for a mobile network with a high mobility. In many applications, a node in a MANET is mobile, yet it can also fluctuate between being mobile and being stationary. Thus, a hybrid routing approach with the ability to adapt to the node mobility could improve the performance of MANETs. In this paper, we propose a Mobility Adaptive Hybrid Routing (MAHR) for MANETs, which varies its routing between reactive approach and proactive approach to adapt to node mobility. The MAHR consists of three parts: (a) calculation of mobility ratio, (b) core node selection, and (c) procedure of hybrid routing. The simulation results showed that MAHR could achieve the advantages of both reactive and proactive routing approaches in performance.