Route Maintenance in a Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Network

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is formed by a cluster of mobile hosts, without the infrastructure of base stations. To deal with the dynamic changing topology of a MANET, many routing protocols have been proposed. In this paper, we consider the route maintenance problem, which includes two parts: route deterioration and route breakage. In a MANET, a route may suddenly become broken because only one host roams away. Even if a route remains connected, it may become worse due to host mobility or a better route newly being formed in the system. Existing protocols, however, will stick with a fixed route once it is discovered, until it is expired or broken. In this paper, we show how to enhance several existing protocols with route optimization and local route recovery capability. So the routing paths can be adjusted on-the-fly while they are still being used for delivering packets and can be patched in minimum wireless bandwidth and delay while route errors occur.