Utilization of Established Paths in Finding New Routes in Location-Aided Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

摘要

This paper proposes a new enhancement generally applicable to routing algorithms for wireless ad hoc networks that utilize location information. Due to the mobility of the hosts, the topology of the network may change constantly and in unpredictable ways. This makes route discovery and maintenance more challenging than in wired networks. In wireless networks, a broadcast is the intrinsic communication method; i.e., when a packet is sent out form a host, it will be broadcast to all its neighbor nodes. To find a new path in a wireless a network, a special control packet is sent in all directions with the hope that one of the copies will reach the destination. This process, called flooding, takes a huge amount of time and resources; therefore, it would be wise to utilize the effort already invested in existing paths when finding new paths. With this observation, we present an algorithm for finding a new path by utilizing existing paths, when available. This unique feature reduces the need for flooding control messages and results in a increase in available bandwidth for data transfer.