Topology-Aware Mechanism to Improve Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) consist of several nodes that are mobile in nature. The random and unpredictable node mobility in MANETs has negative impact on the network performance as it makes the network prone to frequent link breakages which increase packet loss and control overhead. Reliable MANET can be achieved through fast link failures detection that enables fast notification to be delivered to sources in order to make proper reaction. Therefore, the research work in this paper presents an effective topology-aware method, called Route Failure Prediction (RFP), which predicts the link breakage before it actually occurs in source routing networks. A node that utilizes RFP divides the area within transmission range into regions based on the signal strength received from neighbors. It calculates the changing rate of its location and update the upstream node if it is about to move out of the transmission range to avoid communication disruption. The performance of RFP was evaluated using ns-2 and compared to that of DSR. The experimental results gained from simulations were analyzed in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Control Overhead (COH), and the End-to-End Delay with respect to the number of events of link breakage happened during the experiments. The numerical results showed that RFP outperforms DSR significantly and offers reliable data transfer between sources and destinations.