Unicast routing in mobile ad hoc networks: present and future directions

Recent advances in portable computing and wireless technologies are opening up exciting possibilities for the future of wireless mobile networks. A MANET (mobile ad hoc networks) is a self-organizing and a self-configuring network which does not require fixed infrastructure. All nodes in it are capable of movement, and can be interconnected in an arbitrary manner. At present, unicast routing is a focus of research on MANETs. We present the unicast routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks. We provide a detailed description of issues and protocols for unicast routing over MANETs. We discuss the future directions in research on unicast routing. We hope that the discussion presented here will be helpful to application developers in selecting an appropriate unicast protocol and pave the way for future research.