Dynamically adaptive multipath routing based on AODV

Abstract — Mobile ad hoc networks are typically char-acterized by high mobility and frequent link failures that result in low throughput and high end-to-end delay. To reduce the number of route discoveries due to such broken paths, multipath routing can be utilized so that alternate paths are available. Current approaches to multipath routing make use of pre-computed routes determined during route discovery. These solutions, however, suffer during high mobility because the alternate paths are not actively maintained. Hence, precisely when needed, the routes are often broken. To overcome this problem, we present an adaptive multipath solution. In this approach, multiple paths are formed during the route discovery process. All the paths are maintained by means of periodic update packets unicast along each path. These update packets measure the signal strength of each hop along the alternate paths. At any point of time, only the path with the strongest signal strength is used for data transmission. In this paper, we present two variations of our protocol and evaluate both with respect to two previously published multipath routing protocols. Simulation results show that the proposed solutions result in significant performance improvement. I