Dynamic route diversion in connectionless mobile ad hoc networks

In a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET), communication connections need to adapt to frequent unpredictable topology changes due to the mobility, energy constraints, and limited computing power of the mobile hosts. Early solutions address this fundamental requirement by employing techniques that can reconnect a broken link quickly with low overhead. This strategy, however, cannot cope with a high frequency of broken links in a high mobility environment. To address this problem, a few connectionless-oriented techniques, e.g., Connectionless Approach (CLA), have emerged. These schemes rely on any mobile hosts along the general direction towards the destination node to help forward the data packets. Extensive simulation results have shown that these methods are more robust, and perform significantly better than connection-oriented techniques. The current connectionless methods, however, may suffer from packet drops since traffic congestion is not considered in the packet forwarding policy. In this paper, we address this weakness by applying a cross-layer design, where the physical and MAC layer knowledge of the wireless medium is shared with higher layer, in order to provide efficient methods of establish and maintain routes. We proposed two connectionless-oriented dynamic route diversion techniques; and give simulation results, based on GloMoSim, to illustrate their performance advantage.