An adaptive algorithm for connecting mobile ad hoc network to Internet with unidirectional links supported

Abstract The performance of Internet connectivity is degraded dramatically by blind rebroadcast of gateway discovery packets when obvious unidirectional links are ignored. To overcome this problem, an effective adaptive gateway discovery algorithm for connecting mobile ad hoc network to Internet with unidirectional links supported is proposed in this paper. On the basis of modification for ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV), through rebroadcasting the gateway discovery messages and gateway advertisement messages, both of which are extended with local connection information, unidirectional links are successfully removed from global route computations and Internet connectivity is simultaneously enhanced. Furthermore, an adaptive Internet working scheme is adopted to provide the best coverage of gateway advertisement according to dynamically adjusting broadcast range and sending interval of gateway advertisement messages in terms of network conditions. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid Internet connectivity algorithm can provide better connectivity performance due to avoiding unidirectional links effectively with reasonable overhead.