Adaptive routing for tactical communications

We present a new approach to performing adaptive, loop-free, destination-based unicast forwarding in an IP-based network. The approach is an integration of several well-known techniques, including broadcast-based flooding, on-demand route discovery, and link state routing. In this approach, routers are not universally in one routing mode, such as a `link-state', for all destinations but instead apply different forwarding strategies depending on the current route availability and quality on a perdestination basis. Furthermore, this approach extends well to traffic prioritized networks, since different forwarding mechanisms can be employed based on the priority of the flow. It also does not require tight coordination between routers on the routing mode being applied for a given destination. This allows parts of the topology to adapt to the local environment as it changes. In this paper we introduce the Adaptive Routing mechanism, evaluate its performance in a thirty-node mobile networking scenario, and discuss its applicability to tactical communications.