Internet Connectivity for IPv6-Based Mobile Ad Hoc Networks using Cross-Layer Approach

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a selforganizing network where mobile nodes can communicate with each other over multiple hops. In military zones, MANETs are used because wireless infrastructured network is difficult to setup for maintaining communication over large areas. With the advent of the Internet, necessity for global communication is also becoming a core requirement for MANETs in such military areas. Therefore, Internet connectivity in MANETs has received significant attention in the past few years. Routing packets efficiently within and outside a MANET is a challenge and much effort has been given to the design of routing protocols to achieve higher packet delivery ratio (PDR) over Intra-MANET (packet traveling within MANET) and Internet-MANET (packets traveling between MANET and Internet) traffic. However, most of these routing protocols use information available at the network layer to route packets. In this paper, we have designed a crosslayered routing protocol by exploiting the information gained at the link layer in addition to the information available at the network layer to achieve higher PDR compared to existing protocols. Through simulations we have shown that cross-layered approach can achieve higher PDR for Internet-MANET traffic.