A Topology Aware Routing Algorithm for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile hosts forming a temporary network without any centralised administration or standard support services. In the MANET, cooperation between nodes is required to route multi-hop messages from the source to destination due to the limited transmission range of each node. Traditional routing protocols such as DSDV, AODV, DSR and TORA do not consider sufficient topology information in their routing decision, thus they are slow to react to drastic topology changes. We explore some methods of obtaining network topology information and propose that a topology aware routing protocol will have better performance as it will be able to adapt to the changes caused by node mobility. Based on the belief that a more stable route will outlast its more dynamic counterparts, we propose a new metric, the Route Stability Metric (RSM), to be used for route selection in routing protocols. RSM measures the rate at which a route changes based on the relative distances and speeds of node pairs in the route without the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) or other specialised hardware. We implement the new metric in DSR-RSM and compare its performance with DSR under the cnet simulation environment. Simulation results demonstrate that including topology information into the routing decision improves throughput, reduces overheads and route failures in dynamic mobile networks