Adapting to route-demand and mobility (ARM) in ad-hoc network routing

In this dissertation, we present ARM (Adapting to Route-demand and Mobility), a control mechanism that allows any proactive routing protocol to dynamically adapt in a totally distributed manner to changes in node mobility and workload route-demands. Each node independently maintains a mobility metric indicating how fast its neighborhood is currently changing, and a route-demand metric indicating which destinations are currently involved in data forwarding. Control functions use these metrics to dynamically adjust the period and the content of routing updates.; We apply ARM to the DSDV protocol, coming up with ARM-DSDV. Simulations for various mobility and workload scenarios show that ARM-DSDV typically achieves better data delivery, while keeping the routing cost at reasonable levels, when compared to DSDV with update period optimized for the scenario. In designing and implementing ARM, the Information Dynamics framework provides a useful reference.; ARM is a result of applying the Information Dynamics framework to ad-hoc network routing. Information Dynamics emphasizes the role of information and its temporal dynamics in system design. In the context of ad-hoc network routing, the routing state maintained by a node is its perceived reality, and the mobility and route-demand metrics are indicators of its current value.