A Virtual Topology Based Routing Protocol for Multihop Dynamic Wireless Networks

In this paper, a new hierarchical multihop routing algorithm and its performance evaluation is presented for fully dynamic wireless networks. The routing algorithm operates on a virtual topology obtained by partitioning the routing information for mobile terminals and mobile base stations into a hierarchical, distributed database. Based on the virtual topology, each mobile base station stores a fraction of the routing information to balance the complexity of the location-update and the path-finding operations. Mobility of the network entities changes the load distribution and causes processing and memory bottlenecks in some parts of the network. However, since the network routing elements are also mobile, their movement can be used to distribute the load. Thus, new load balancing schemes are intoduced to distribute the routing overhead uniformly among the mobile base stations. The performance of the hierarchical multihop routing algorithm is investigated through simulations. It is shown that the routing protocol can cope with high mobility and deliver packets to the destinations successfully.