A New Method of Selecting Stable Paths in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Node mobility is one of dominant factors causing decreased performance in mobile ad hoc networks and restricting network scalability. Selecting stable paths is an effective way to reduce the impact of node mobility. Current methods of selecting stable paths suffer from several shortcomings. They may need a hardware function support for geographical position location or cross-layer function support for sending signal strength information to upper layers. In this paper a new simple method for selecting stable paths is proposed. This method uses a Neighbor Change Ratio metric and does not require any hardware function or cross layer support. The method selects paths which have small hop counts and stable local topologies. An extension to the AODV routing protocol is used as an example of using the Neighbor Change Ratio metric. The resulting NCR-AODV protocol is simulated under various mobility and traffic scenarios. The results show that the NCR-AODV protocol has a lower long path break probability and improved network performance compared to the AODV protocol