Traffic-based multipath routing for mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks are characterized by high node mobility and lack of fixed infrastructure. As a result, such networks have highly dynamic network topology and require a distributed approach to routing. Robust and bandwidth-efficient routing protocols are required to mitigate the effect of node mobility and bandwidth constraints. In this paper, we propose a multipath extension to the relative distance micro-discovery ad hoc routing (RDMAR) protocol. The basic idea is to discover multiple routes between a source-destination pair and then choose an appropriate strategy to select some or all of these paths to route data. It is shown that the use of multiple paths has favorable impact on the packet delivery performance for both real-time and non real-time traffic.