Heterogeneous routing protocol coordinator for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Lots of routing protocols have been proposed in the literatures to overcome several challenges in ad hoc networks. The fundamental point we consider in this paper is that most of such protocols axe generally based on the assumption that mobile nodes are functionally equivalent to each other in computing power and memory space. Moreover, all of the mobile nodes are required to use a common routing protocol to communicate with each other. However, such assumptions do not reflect the real world, even further the future oriented ubiquitous world. The ubiquitous paradigm requires networking technologies to support the heterogeneity including various capabilities to compute, amounts of storage, radio interfaces, patterns of mobility and others. In real scenario, for instance, some nodes may not want to relay packets for others owing to their power constraints. Also there might be nodes employing different routing protocols in a single communication zone. To cover some of these cases, this paper proposes a simple but efficient approach called HRPC (Heterogeneous Routing Protocol Coordinator) that works well in our previously proposed MANET axchitecture. HRPC is not a stand-alone routing protocol but a coordinating module for support bridging functionality between heterogeneous routing protocols in MANET. This paper also gives HRPC implementation and its demonstration results, where DYMO and OLSR routing protocols are used as an exemplified scenario to evaluate the operability of HRPC.