A proximity-based path compression protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

This paper presents a path compression protocol for on-demand ad hoc network routing protocols, which is called dynamic path shortening (DPS). In DPS, active route paths adapt dynamically to node mobility based on the "local" link quality estimation at each own node, without exchanging periodic control packets such as Hello messages. Each node monitors its own local link quality only when receiving packets and estimates whether to enter the "proximity" of the neighbor node to shorten active paths in a distributed manner. Simulation results of DPS in several scenarios of various node mobility and traffic flows reveal that adding DPS to DSR which is the conventional prominent on-demand ad hoc routing protocol significantly reduces the end-to-end packet latency up to 50-percent and also the number of routing packets up to 70-percent over the pure DSR, in heavy traffic cases. We also demonstrate the other simulation results obtained by using our two novel mobility models which generate more realistic node mobility than the standard random waypoint mobility model: Random Orientation Mobility and Random Escape Mobility models. Finally, simple performance experiments using DPS implementation on FreeBSD OS demonstrate that DPS shortens active routes in the order of milliseconds (about 5 ms).