A MANET protocol considering link stability and bandwidth efficiency

Abstract

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is an autonomous collection of mobile nodes that communicate over relatively bandwidth constrained wireless links. Frequent link changes and limited bandwidth make communication in MANET particularly challenging. Based on AODV, we propose a MANET routing protocol considering link stability and bandwidth efficiency. The protocol uses distributed Q-learning to infer network status information and takes in to consideration link stability and bandwidth efficiency while selecting a route. The protocol can efficiently handle network mobility by a way of preemptively switching to a better route before current route fails. We study the performance of this protocol through simulation and demonstrate its significant improvement compared to AODV.