A dual-path on-demand routing protocol for tactical wireless networks

Although multi-path routing protocols are more complicated to design than single-path based ones, they can be more resilient to route failures. Also, they can achieve a load balancing and hence lower end-to-end delay of transmitted messages in between a source and destination. Such advantages of multi-path routing can be significant in tactical wireless networks, where the messages transmitted are often time-critical and the topology are very unpredictable due to node mobility and link instability. In this paper, we propose a simplified multi-path routing (i.e., dual path) protocol for tactical wireless networks with multiple interfaces. Our dual-path routing protocol has an on-demand routing feature with route request/reply message exchange. We performed a simulation study using the OPNET simulator.