Enhancing route maintenance in RSEA-AODV for mobile ad hoc networks

Due to mobility, the topology of a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) changes frequently, making it more difficult to find routes that last for the entire duration of data transfer. Route maintenance and restoration is becoming a crucial factor in the design of routing protocols. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to enhance the route maintenance process in Route Stability and Energy Aware Routing (RSEA-AODV) protocol that accounts for both stability and energy metrics during route discovery, through cross layer approach. This is achieved by monitoring the signal strength, residual energy and interface queue length at periodic intervals to proactively establish the alternate route for data transfer through “make-before-break” route repair mechanism. It is simulated using ns2, under different mobility conditions. This protocol is compared with other similar routing protocols: RSEA and LEAR. Our experimental results show better performance in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio, Control Overhead and end-end Delay.