Multi-rate aware routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

This paper introduces multi-rate aware routing scheme that helps to improve the resource utilization and to minimize the power consumption in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). The existing MANET routing protocols (e.g., AODV, DSR, and TORA) attempt to minimize the number of hops between source-destination pairs. These routing protocols are all designed under the assumption of using only single data rate in the wireless channel (e.g., IEEE 802.11). Currently, 802.11b supports the various data rate, 11 Mbps, 5.5 Mbps, 2 Mbps and 1 Mbps according to channel conditions between mobile terminals, through several modulation schemes that are optimized for channel conditions. So if we utilize this multi-rate support from MAC and physical layers when packets are routed in mobile ad hoc networks, we can achieve better performance in throughput and resource utilization. In this paper, we propose a multi-rate aware sub layer (MAS), which is independent of IP protocol and enables the full utilization of the multi-rate channel characteristics. The key function of MAS is to change the next hop node to another node through which higher data rates are available, in the basis of two-hop neighbor information and link states. We show through simulation that multi-rate aware protocol outperforms traditional MANET routing protocols due to its utilization of multi-rate support.