Contention and Queue-Aware Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Most load aware protocols for ad hoc networks use queue size as the main traffic load metric. However, this metric does not reflect the impact of channel contention from neighbor nodes. In this paper, we propose a load-aware routing protocol using two load metrics for route selection, which include MAC layer channel contention information, and the number of packets in the interface queue. MAC layer contention information provides an accurate estimation of neighbor nodes' state, and queue length provides a measurement of traffic load at the mobile node itself. This load-aware routing protocol can effectively balance the load and improve the performance of the ad hoc network. Impacts of these load metrics on the routing performance are studied, and simulations are conducted to evaluate our proposed scheme.