Reliable Data Delivery Mechanisms for Highly Dynamic Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Most existing ad hoc routing protocols are susceptible to node mobility, especially for large-scale networks. The additional latency incurred by local route recovery is greatly reduced and the duplicate relaying caused by packet reroute is also decreased. This paper proposes a Location Based Opportunistic Routing Protocol (LOR) and Void Handling Based on Virtual Destination (VHVD) scheme to addresses the problem of delivering data packets for highly dynamic mobile ad hoc networks in a reliable and timely manner. This protocol takes advantage of the stateless property of geographic routing and the broadcast nature of wireless medium. When a data packet is sent out, some of the neighbor nodes that have overheard the transmission will serve as forwarding candidates, and take turn to forward the packet if it is not relayed by the specific best forwarder within a certain period of time. By utilizing such in-the-air backup, communication is maintained without being interrupted. The additional latency incurred by local route recovery is greatly reduced and the duplicate relaying caused by packet reroute is also decreased. Simulation results on NS2 verified the effectiveness of the proposed protocol with improvement in throughput by 28 %.