Label-Switched Multi-Path Routing for Mission-Critical Tactical Message Delivery

MANET (Mobile Ad-hoc Network) has been developed for tactical networks consisting of mobile wireless nodes with various platforms. The secure delivery of mission-critical C2 (Command and Control) messages is one of critical requirements in tactical environments. However, the provision of QoS(Quality of Service) as well as the mission-critical message delivery are still ongoing problem to be solved in MANET due to its lack of resources and harsh propagation environments. In this paper, we propose a label-switched multi-path routing protocol (LMRP) to guarantee the secure delivery of mission-critical messages. To balance between the QoS support for non-mission-critical flows and the preemption for mission-critical flows, we also propose the packet forwarding scheme. The performances of the proposed method are evaluated using OPNET simulator, and the simulation results show that the proposed method can improve loss, delay and delay variation performances compared to existing MANET routing schemes such as AODV.