Design and analysis of a Speed-Aware Routing Protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

The flexibility of movement for the wireless ad hoc devices, referred to as node mobility, introduces challenges such as dynamic topological changes, increased frequency of route disconnections and high packet loss rate in Mobile Ad hoc Wireless Network (MANET) routing. This research proposes a novel on-demand routing protocol, Speed-Aware Routing Protocol (SARP) to mitigate the effects of high node mobility by reducing the frequency of route disconnections in a MANET. SARP identifies a highly mobile node which forms an unstable link by predicting the link expiration time (LET) for a transmitter and receiver pair. When the nodes have high relative velocity, the LET calculated is a small value; this means that the link is predicted to disconnect before the successful transmission of a specific demand. SARP omits such a packet-sending node from the link route during the route discovery phase. The omission of such unstable links helps SARP limit the flooding of control packets during route maintenance and reduces the overall control overhead generated in on-demand routing protocols. NS2 was used to implement the SARP with ad hoc on-demand vector (AODV) as the underlying routing algorithm. Extensive simulations were then conducted using Random Waypoint Mobility model to analyze the performance of SARP. The results from these simulations demonstrated that SARP reduced the overall control traffic of the underlying protocol AODV significantly in situations of high mobility and dense networks; in addition, it showed only a marginal difference as compared to AODV, in all aspects of quality-of-service (QOS) in situations of low mobility and sparse networks --Abstract, page iii

Mobility and Fast-Fading Impact Study on Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) protocol is affected by various environmental factors like mobility and fading, which depreciate the performance of the protocol. Though there is a commendable amount of work with different MANET protocol comparisons, seldom has there been a comparative study based on realistic simulation scenarios in order to examine the effects of network density, mobility and fading. Hence, this paper outlines a comparative study on the performance of three extensively employed reactive MANET protocols - AODV, DSR and DYMOUM. They are simulated in an environment effected by the three parameters and then thoroughly evaluated through a numerical study. The paper results in providing design considerations for the developing speed-aware routing protocol (SARP)