A Cross Layer Metric for Discovering Reliable Routes in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Host mobility in mobile ad hoc networks causes failure of wireless links between nodes and breaks all the routes that use these links. Consequently, route reconstructions are needed, which is one of the most critical problems for this type of wireless networks. The number of route reconstructions can be reduced if more reliable wireless links are used. Also by these links, stable clusters can be constructed as is needed in cluster based protocols. Reliable routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks use many link reliability metrics for finding these links; four of the most commonly used are “Link Expiration Time”, “Probabilistic Link Reliable Time”, “Link Packet Error Rate” and “Link Received Signal Strength”. It is shown that these metrics enhance the reliability and reduce the number of route reconstructions, but to the best of our knowledge there is no report that compare their efficiencies. In this paper, we make this comparison in different network conditions and discuss their optimal applications. Then, a new cross layer metric is proposed that combines the aforementioned metrics according to their efficiency by means of a unit weight function. Simulation results show that by using all these metrics, the number of route reconstructions is reduced, and for the proposed one the result is better than the others.