Research of QoS-Aware Routing Protocol with Load Balancing for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

It is very necessary for mobile ad hoc networks to have an efficient routing and quality of service mechanism to support diverse applications. The routing algorithm in the MANETs should also try to balance the network load. Research in this paper combines the multi-constraint QoS mechanism with the load balancing scheme to search the satisfying path between the source node and destination node. The main objective is to develop a load balancing strategy that could monitor any changes to the load status of the neighborhoods and be able to choose the least loaded routes with the knowledge of the surrounding load status. The AQRL protocol makes an extension on the AODV and utilizes the node´s reservable bandwidth and load information to distribute the network loads, which can prevent network from getting into the sate of congestion, and avoid the power of congested node to be exhausted. In experiments of NS2, simulation results show that the AQRL protocol can improve packet delivery ratio with less transportation delay compared with the on-demand routing algorithm. And in the different level of network load, it can reduce the average end-to-end delay to achieve better network performance and efficiency.