Routing protocols for AD-Hoc

wireless networks
 Design issues
ISSUES IN DESIGNING A ROUTING PROTOCOL
FOR AD HOC WIRELESS NETWORKS
• Mobility
• Bandwidth constraint
• Error-prone shared broadcast radio channel
• Hidden and exposed terminal problems
 Design issues
Mobility
• Network topology is highly dynamic - suffers frequent path
breaks.
• Disruption - movement of intermediate nodes or end nodes .
• Wired network routing protocols cannot be used in adhoc
wireless networks because the nodes here are not stationary
and the convergence is very slow in wired networks.
• Frequently changing network topologies
• Routing protocols for ad hoc wireless networks must be able to
perform efficient and effective mobility management.
 Design issues
Bandwidth constraint
• Abundant bandwidth in wired networks (fibre
optics)
• In a wireless network, the radio band is limited, and
hence the data rates it can offer are much less than
what a wired network can offer.
• Routing protocols must use the bandwidth optimally
by keeping the overhead as low as possible.
• Constraint on routing protocols in maintaining
the topological information.
 Design issues
Error-prone shared broadcast radio channel
• The broadcast nature of the radio channel poses a unique
challenge in ad hoc wireless networks.
• The wireless links have time-varying characteristics in terms
of link capacity and link-error probability.
• This requires that the adhoc wireless network routing
protocol interact with the MAC layer to find alternate
routes through better-quality links.
• Transmissions in ad hoc wireless networks result in collisions
of data and control packets.
• Therefore, it is required that ad hoc wireless network routing
protocols find paths with less congestion.
 Design issues
Hidden and exposed terminal problems
Solution for this problem include medium access
collision avoidance (MACA):
o Transmitting node first explicitly notifies all
potential hidden nodes about the forthcoming
transmission by means of a two-way
handshake control protocol called RTS-CTS
protocol exchange.
o This may not solve the problem completely
but it reduces the probability of collisions.
 Design issues
Hidden and exposed terminal problems
Medium access collision avoidance for wireless
(MACAW):
• Requires that a receiver acknowledges each
successful reception of data packet
• Successful transmission is a four-way exchange
mechanism, RTS-CTS-Data-ACK
• Other solutions include floor acquisition
multiple access (FAMA) and Dual busy tone
multiple access (DBTMA).
 Design issues
Resource Constraints
• Two essential and limited resources are battery
life and processing power.
• Devices used in adhoc wireless networks require
portability, and hence they also have size and
weight constraints along with the restrictions on
the power source. Increasing the battery power
and processing ability makes the nodes bulky and
less portable.
 Characteristics of an Ideal Routing Protocol for ad hoc wireless
networks
• Fully distributed (centralized routing - high control overhead, not scalable).
• Adaptive to frequent topology changes caused by the mobility of nodes.
• Route computation and maintenance must involve a minimum number of
nodes. (minimum connection setup time is desired).
• It must be localized (global state maintenance involves a huge state propagation
control overhead).
• It must be loop-free and free from stale routes.
• Minimum packet collision – by limiting number of broadcasts.
• Reliable transmission – to reduce message loss and to prevent stale routes
• Quick convergence - converge to optimal routes once the network topology
becomes stable.
• Optimally use scarce resources - bandwidth, computing power, memory,
battery power.
• Every node must try to store information regarding the stable local topology
only. Changes in remote parts of the network must not cause updates in the
topology information maintained by the node.
• Quality of service (QoS) and support for time-sensitive traffic.
 Classification
• The routing protocol for adhoc wireless
networks can be broadly classified into 4
categories based on
– Routing information update mechanism.
– Use of temporal information for routing
– Routing topology
– Utilization of specific resources.
Classification
 Classification
1. Based on the routing information update mechanism
i. Proactive or table-driven routing protocols:
• Every node maintains the network topology information
in the form of routing tables by periodically exchanging
routing information.
• Routing information is generally flooded in the whole
network.
• Whenever a node requires a path to a destination, it runs an
appropriate path-finding algorithm on the topology
information it maintains.
 Classification
1. Based on the routing information update
mechanism
ii. Reactive or on-demand routing protocols:
•Do not maintain the network topology information.
•Obtain the necessary path when it is required, by using a
connection establishment process.
 Classification
1. Based on the routing information update
mechanism
iii. Hybrid routing protocols:
Combine the best features of the above two categories.
• Nodes within a certain distance from the node concerned,
or within a particular geographical region, are said to be
within the routing zone of the given node.
• For routing within this zone, a table-driven approach is
used.
• For nodes that are located beyond this zone, an on-demand
approach is used.
 Classification
2. Based on the use of temporal information for
routing
i. Routing protocols using past temporal information:
• Use information about the past status of the links or the
status of links at the time of routing to make routing
decisions.
 Classification
2. Based on the use of temporal information for
routing
ii. Routing protocols that use future temporal
information:
• Use information about the expected future status of the
wireless links to make approximate routing decisions.
• Apart from the lifetime of wireless links, the future status
information also includes information regarding the lifetime
of the node, prediction of location, and prediction of link
availability.
 Classification
3. Based on the routing topology
i. Flat topology routing protocols
• Make use of a flat addressing scheme similar to the one
used in IEEE 802.3 LANs.
• It assumes the presence of a globally unique
addressing mechanism for nodes in an ad hoc wireless
network.
 Classification
3. Based on the routing topology
ii. Hierarchical topology routing protocols
• Make use of a logical hierarchy in the network and an
associated addressing scheme.
• The hierarchy could be based on geographical information
or it could be based on hop distance.
 Classification
4. Based on the utilization of specific resources
i. Power-aware routing:
• Aims at minimizing the consumption of a very
important resource in the ad hoc wireless networks: the
battery power.
• The routing decisions are based on minimizing the
power consumption either logically or globally in the
network.
 Classification
4. Based on the utilization of specific resources
ii. Geographical information assisted routing :
• Improves the performance of routing and
reduces the control overhead by effectively
utilizing the geographical information
available.