Mobile Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocols

In a mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), each node also acts as router, forwarding data packets for other nodes. All the nodes run in a cooperative manner in order to complete a specified task. This kind of network architecture represents development course of network computing, thus applying in the comprehensive fields such as military, traffic, education.On the other hand, the unique characteristics of MANET present a new set of nontrivial challenges to network routing design, including open network architecture, shared wireless medium, stringent resource constraints, and highly dynamic network topology. Consequently, the traditional routing protocols do not fit for MANET domain any longer. This dissertation focused on the problems of MANET routing protocols, presented several novel opinions and solutions from the views of intelligent routing, spatially awareness routing, non-cooperative routing and secure routing, and gained creative achievement.Firstly, the thesis introduced the evaluation metrics of MANET routing protocols, defined network evironmental parameters, and presented a though survey on existing MANET routing protocols. Three typical protocols were discussed in detail and compared, which were DSR, Terminode Routing and GPSR.Secondly, Combining with mobile agent technology, the thesis defined MANET routing course in the form of a planning problem. An agent model describing network entities was set up. Swarm intelligence technology was applied to solve MANET routing problem and AntNet alogrithm was improved.Given a scenario of Vehicle Ad hoc Network(VANET), the thesis analyzed the characteristics of VANET and their impacts on routing protocols, introduced spatial model, illustrated how to set up and store the spatial model, and presented two spacially awareness routing protocols to evade permanent or temporary topology holes respectively which frequently occured in the scenario. Simulation results show new routing protocols could achieve better performance in packet delivery ratio.Nodes behave egoistic due to limited resource. Non-cooperative game was used to describe nodes'behavior in the dissertation. After proving corresponding relationship between nash equilibrium points of game and effective MANET routes, conditions of stimulating cooperation were discussed. Evolutionary game based on bounded rationality was used to achieve satisfied solution of the model. A framework of non-cooperative routing was realized.The unique characteristics of MANET destine its difficulty in secure routing. The thesis presented a brief introduction on security risk and research progress, gave and analyzed a layered hybrid security stragety for protecting entities in MANET. A network-layer collabroative security mechanism was also brought forward and realized by combining with SAR alogrithm.At last, we review the entire work and suggest the direction for the furure research in this field.