Feedback-based multipath routing for mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network is characterized by multi-hop wireless links, absence of a fixed infrastructure, and frequent host mobility. The instability of the topology in this type of networks makes multipath routing difficult for the available alternative paths are inherently unreliable. So far, much of the effort of multipath routing has been focused on using the predefined alternate path when a relay on the primary path has failed despite the alternate path is out of use. Accordingly, this reactive route handoff can decrease the overall network performance with increasing routing overhead. In this paper, we propose a feedback-based multiple paths route scheme and provide its analytical evaluation. Our scheme is based on utilizing an alternative path as a feedback channel to carry path state information for primary path. In this regard, it can proactively give up the primary path and use the current candidate path as primary path before it breaks. In this paper, we consider the problem of routing data over multiple disjoint paths via an analytic modeling framework to determine the frequency of routing discovery procedure. The results show that a significantly better performance than the single path routing and traditional multipath routing can be achieved.