Multiple metrics based load balancing routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Existing on demand routing protocols for MANET´s use shortest path as the routing metric, which leads to overuse of an existing path thereby creating hot spots leading to congestion and packet loss. Hence it is important for a routing protocol to adapt to increasing load conditions by timely estimating the load and avoid such congested nodes during route formation. Estimating the load is difficult in MANET´s due to time varying channel conditions and contention among neighboring nodes. Through this study we attempt to provide a solution for discovering new routing paths which are efficient and have lesser traffic. We suggest a new method that characterizes the traffic by considering three parameters channel load, channel access contentions and remaining energy at a node into routing decisions. Estimating the channel conditions can effectively determine congestion. Another factor that contributes to better performance is that of stability, which is done by determining the energy level associated with a node. Multipath versions of on demand routing protocols are designed for minimizing routing overhead and end to end delay, but incorporating load awareness can further improve their performance. So this study aims at enhancing AOMDV with load awareness. Simulation studies show that proposed mechanism significantly improves the performance of AOMDV under different scenarios.