Variable power transmission in highly Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks pose challenges in terms of power control, due to their fixed transmission power, the mobility of nodes and a constantly changing topology. High levels of power are needed in wireless networks, particularly for routing. As a result of the increase in the number of communication devices being used, there is the challenge of increased density within these networks, and a need to extend the battery life of communication devices. In order to address this challenge, this thesis presents the development of a new protocol (Dynamic Power AODV), which is an enhancement of the Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol. The new protocol dynamically adjusts the transmission power based on the range, which depends on node density. This thesis provides a systematic evaluation of the performance of DP-AODV, in a high speed and high density environment, in comparison with three other routing protocols. The experiments demonstrated that DP-AODV performed better than two of the protocols in all scenarios. As compared to the third protocol (AOMDV), DP-AODV gave better performance results for throughput and Power Consumption, but AOMDV performed better in terms of Packet Delivery Fraction rate and End-to-End Delay in some cases

Flooding control in route discovery for reactive routing in mobile ad hoc networks

Routing is a very important function in the network layer of the OSI model for wired and wireless networks. Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are a collection of wireless nodes forming a temporary network that is supposed to be constructed on the fly without infrastructure and prior setup. This fashion of setup demands that the nodes act as routers for other nodes. This necessitates the need of a robust dynamic routing scheme. Routing protocols are classified into three main categories: proactive, reactive, and hybrid. Reactive routing has been the focus of research in recent years due to its control traffic overhead reduction. Reactive routing operation involves three main steps: route discovery, packet delivery, and route maintenance. If a source node, initiating the message, knows the route to the destination, this route is used to transmit the message; otherwise, the source node will initiate a route discovery algorithm to build the route, which highlights the importance of this phase of the on-demand routing process. This thesis work will present a route discovery algorithm that will try to find the route between the sender and the intended receiver in relatively short periods of end-to-end delay, least amount of control traffic overhead, and a loop free path between the two communicating parties. Furthermore, performance comparison between the proposed algorithm and other standard algorithms, namely basic flooding and flooding with self-pruning, will be conducted. The proposed route discovery algorithm can be used in several approaches serving ad hoc network setup, where connectivity establishment and maintenance is important