Proactive Distance-Vector Multipath Routing for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Routing in wireless ad hoc networks of mobile nodes is complicated by the fact that the transmission ranges and the communication bandwidth is limited, and that the network topology is highly dynamic due to continuously moving nodes. In this paper, a new approach is presented to equip proactive distance-vector routing algrithms with the capability of using multiple paths to each target. The basic idea of our multipath routing proposal is to split up a path between a source and a target node into two paths at every forwarding node. In contrast to other multipath approaches, our solution uses already available topology information and thus does not require any additional routing messages to be sent. The benefits of our approach with respect to load distribution, bottleneck avoidance, fairness and communication breakdowns are demonstrated via simulations.