UNIT 1

CELLULAR AND AD HOC WIRELESS NETWORKS

The current cellular wireless networks are classified as the infrastructure dependent network. The path setup
for a call between two nodes, say, node C to E, is completed through base station as illustrated in figure below.

Figure 5.2 A cellular network

 Adhoc wireless networks are defined as a category of wireless network that utilize multi-hop radio
replaying and are capable of operating without the support of any fixed infrastructure.
 Absence of any central co-ordinator or base station makes the routing complex.
 Adhoc wireless network topology for the cellular network shown in above figure is illustrated below.
 The path setup for a call between 2 nodes, say, node C to E , is completed through the intermediate
mobile node F.
 Wireless mesh network and Wireless sensor networks are specific examples of adhoc wireless
networks.
 Figure 5.3: An ad hoc wireless network
 The presence of base station simplifies routing and resource management in a cellular network.
 But in adhoc networks, routing and resource management are done in a distributed manner in which all
nodes co-ordinate to enable communication among them.
The following table shows the difference between cellular networks and adhoc wireless networks.
APPLICATIONS OF AD HOC WIRELESS NETWORKS
Military Application
 Adhoc wireless networks can be very useful in establishing communication among a group of soldiers
for tactical operations.
 Setting up of a fixed infrastructure for communication among group of soldiers in enemy territories or
in inhospitable terrains may not be possible.
 In such a case, adhoc wireless networks provide required communication mechanism quickly.
 The primary nature of the communication required in a military environment enforces certain
important requirements on adhoc wireless networks namely, Reliability, Efficiency, Secure
communication & Support for multicast routing.

Collaborative & Distributed computing

 Adhoc wireless network helps in collaborative computing, by establishing temporary communication
infrastructure for quick communication with minimal configuration among a group of people in a
conference.
 In distributed file sharing application reliability is of high importance which would be provided by adhoc
network.
 Other applications such as streaming of multimedia objects among participating nodes in ad hoc wireless
networks require support for soft real-time communication
 Devices used for such applications could typically be laptops with add-on wireless interface cards,
enhanced personal digital assistants (PDAs) or mobile devices with high processing power

Emergency Operations
 Ad hoc wireless networks are very useful in emergency operations such as search and rescue, crowd
control and command operations
 The major factors that favour ad hoc wireless networks for such tasks are  self-configuration of the
system with minimal overhead, independent of fixed or centralized infrastructure, the freedom and
flexibility of mobility, and unavailability of conventional communication infrastructure.
 In environments, where the conventional infrastructure based communication facilities are destroyed
due to a war or due to natural calamities, immediate deployment of adhoc wireless networks would be
a good solution for co-ordinating rescue activities.
 They require minimum initial network configuration with very little or no delay

Wireless Mesh Network

 Wireless mesh networks are adhoc wireless network that are formed to provide an alternate
communication infrastructure for mobile or fixed nodes/users, without the spectrum reuse constraint&
requirement of network planning of cellular network.
 It provides many alternate paths for a data transfer session between a source & destination, resulting in
Quick reconfiguration of the path when the existing path fails due to node failure.
 Since the infrastructure built is in the form of small radio relaying devices, the investment required in
wireless mesh networks is much less than what is required for the cellular network counterpart.
 The possible deployment scenarios of wireless mesh networks include: residential zones, highways,
business zones, important civilian regions and university campuses
 Wireless mesh networks should be capable of self-organization and maintenance.
 It operates at license-free ISM band around 2.4 GHz& 5 GHz.
 It is scaled well to provide support to large number of points.
 Major advantage is the support for a high data rate, quick& low cost of deployment, enhanced services,
high scalability, easy extend ability, high availability & low cost per bit.

Wireless Sensor Networks:

 Sensor networks are special category of Adhoc wireless network that are used to provide a wireless
communication infrastructure among the sensors deployed in a specific application domain.
  Sensor nodes are tiny devices that have capability of sensing physical parameters processing the data
gathered, & communication to the monitoring system.
 The issue that make sensor network a distinct category of adhoc wireless network are the following:
Mobility of nodes:
 Mobility of nodes is not a mandatory requirement in sensor networks.
 For example, the nodes used for periodic monitoring of soil properties are not required to be mobile
& the nodes that are fitted on the bodies of patients in a post-surgery ward of a hospital are designed
to support limited or partial mobility.
 In general, sensor networks need not in all cases be designed to support mobility of sensor nodes.

Size of the network:

 The number of nodes in sensor network can be much larger than that in a typical ad hoc wireless
network.

Density of deployment:
 The density of nodes in a sensor network varies with the domain of application.
 For example, Military applications require high availability of the network, making redundancy a
high priority.

Power constraints:
 The power constraints in sensor networks are much more stringent than those in ad hoc wireless
networks. This is mainly because the sensor nodes are expected to operate in harsh environmental
or geographical conditions, with minimum or no human supervision and maintenance.
 In certain case, the recharging of the energy source is impossible.
 Running such a network, with nodes powered by a battery source with limited energy, demands
very efficient protocol at network, data link, and physical layer.
 The power sources used in sensor networks can be classified in to the following 3 categories:
- Replenishable Power source: The power source can be replaced when the existing source is
fully drained.
- Non-replenishable Power source: The power source cannot be replenished once the network
has been deployed. The replacement of sensor node is the only solution.
- Regenerative Power source: Here, Power source employed in sensor network have the
capability of regenerating power from the physical parameter under measurement.

Data / Information fusion:

 Data fusion refers to the aggregation of multiple packets into one before relaying it.
 Data fusion mainly aims at reducing the bandwidth consumed by redundant headers of the packets
and reducing the media access delay involved in transmitting multiple packets.
 Information fusion aims at processing the sensed data at the intermediate nodes and relaying the
outcome to the monitor node.

Traffic Distribution:
 The communication traffic pattern varies with the domain of application in sensor networks.
 For example, the environmental sensing application generates short periodic packets indicating the
status of the environmental parameter under observation to a central monitoring station.
 This kind of traffic requires low bandwidth.
 Ad hoc wireless networks generally carry user traffic such as digitized & packetized voice stream or
data traffic, which demands higher bandwidth.

Hybrid Wireless Networks

 One of the major application area of ad hoc wireless network is in the hybrid wireless architecture such
as Multi-hop Cellular Network [MCN] & Integrated Cellular Adhoc Relay [iCAR].
 The primary concept behind cellular networks is geographical channel reuse.
  Several techniques like cell sectoring, cell resizing and multi-tier cells increase the capacity of cellular
networks.
 MCNs combine the reliability & support of fixed base station of cellular network with flexibility & multi-
hop relaying adhoc wireless networks.
 Major advantages are as follows:
o Higher capacity than cellular networks due to the better channel reuse.
o Increased flexibility & reliability in routing.
o Better coverage & connectivity in holes of a cell can be provided by means of multiple hops through
intermediate nodes in a cell.

ISSUES IN AD HOC WIRELESS NETWORKS

The major issues that affect the design, deployment, & performance of an ad hoc wireless network system are:
 Medium Access Scheme.
 Transport Layer Protocol.
 Routing.
 Multicasting.
 Energy Management.
 Self-Organization.
 Security.
 Addressing & Service discovery.
 Deployment considerations.
 Scalability.
 Pricing Scheme.
 Quality of Service Provisioning

Medium Access Scheme

The primary responsibility of a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol in adhoc wireless networks is the
distributed arbitration for the shared channel for transmission of packets. The major issues to be considered in
designing a MAC protocol for adhoc wireless networks are as follows:
1. Distributed Operation:
 The ad hoc wireless networks need to operate in environments where no centralized coordination
is possible.
 The MAC protocol design should be fully distributed involving minimum control overhead.
2. Synchronization:
 The MAC protocol design should take into account the requirement of time synchronization.
 Synchronization is mandatory for TDMA-based systems for management of transmission and
reception slots.
3. Hidden Terminals:
 Hidden terminals are nodes that are hidden(or not reachable) from the sender of a data
transmission session, but are reachable to the receiver of the session.
4. Exposed terminals:
 Exposed terminals, the nodes that are in the transmission range of the sender of an on-going
session, are prevented from making a transmission.
5. Throughput:
 The MAC protocol employed in adhoc wireless networks should attempt to maximize the
throughput of the system.
 The important considerations for throughput enhancement are
- Minimizing the occurrence of collisions.
- Maximizing channel utilization and
- Minimizing control overhead.
6. Access delay:
 The average delay that any packet experiences to get transmitted.
  The MAC protocol should attempt to minimize the delay.
7. Fairness:
 Fairness refers to the ability of the MAC protocol to provide an equal share or weighted share of the
bandwidth to all competing nodes.
 Fairness can be either node-based or flow-based.
8. Real-time Traffic support:
 In a contention-based channel access environment, without any central coordination, with limited
bandwidth, and with location-dependent contention, supporting time- sensitive traffic such as voice,
video, and real-time data requires explicit support from the MAC protocol.
9. Resource reservation:
 The provisioning of QoS defined by parameters such as bandwidth, delay, and jitter requires
reservation of resources such as bandwidth, buffer space, and processing power.
10. Ability to measure resource availability:
 In order to handle the resources such as bandwidth efficiently and perform call admission control
based on their availability, the MAC protocol should be able to provide an estimation of resource
availability at every node.
 This can also be used for making congestion control decisions.
11. Capability for power control:
 The transmission power control reduces the energy consumption at the nodes, causes a decrease in
interference at neighboring nodes, and increases frequency reuse.
12. Adaptive rate control:
 This refers to the variation in the data bit rate achieved over a channel.
 A MAC protocol that has adaptive rate control can make use of a high data rate when the sender and
receiver are nearby & adaptively reduce the data rate as they move away from each other.
13. Use of directional antennas:
 This has many advantages that include
- Increased spectrum reuse.
- Reduction in interference and
- Reduced power consumption.

Routing
The responsibilities of a routing protocol include exchanging the route information; finding a feasible path to a
destination. The major challenges that a routing protocol faces are as follows:
1. Mobility:
 The Mobility of nodes results in frequent path breaks, packet collisions, transient loops, stale
routing information, and difficulty in resource reservation.
2. Bandwidth constraint:
 Since the channel is shared by all nodes in the broadcast region, the bandwidth available
per wireless link depends on the number of nodes & traffic they handle.
3. Error-prone and shared channel:
 The Bit Error Rate (BER) in a wireless channel is very high [10-5 to 10 -3 ] compared to that in its
wired counterparts [ 10-12 to 10-9 ].
 Consideration of the state of the wireless link, signal-to-noise ratio, and path loss for routing in ad
hoc wireless networks can improve the efficiency of the routing protocol.
4. Location-dependent contention:
 The load on the wireless channel varies with the number of nodes present in a given geographical
region.
 This makes the contention for the channel high when the number of nodes increases.
 The high contention for the channel results in a high number of collisions & a subsequent wastage of
bandwidth.
5. Other resource constraints:
 The constraints on resources such as computing power, battery power, and buffer storage also limit
the capability of a routing protocol.
The major requirements of a routing protocol in adhoc wireless networks are the following.
1. Minimum route acquisition delay:
 The route acquisition delay for a node that does not have a route to a particular destination node
should be as minimal as possible.
 The delay may vary with the size of the network and the network load.
2. Quick route reconfiguration:
 The unpredictable changes in the topology of the network require that the routing protocol be
able to quickly perform route reconfiguration in order to handle path breaks and subsequent
packet losses.
3. Loop-free routing:
 This is a fundamental requirement to avoid unnecessary wastage of network bandwidth.
 In adhoc wireless networks, due to the random movement of nodes, transient loops may form in the
route thus established.
 A routing protocol should detect such transient routing loops & take corrective actions.
4. Distributed routing approach:
 An adhoc wireless network is a fully distributed wireless network & the use of centralized routing
approaches in such a network may consume a large amount of bandwidth.
5. Minimum control overhead:
 The control packets exchanged for finding a new route, and maintaining existing routes should be
kept as minimal as possible.
6. Scalability:
 Scalability is the ability of the routing protocol to scale well in a network with a large number of
nodes.
 This requires minimization of control overhead & adaptation of the routing protocol to the network
size.
7. Provisioning of QoS:
 The routing protocol should be able to provide a certain level of QoS as demanded by the nodes or
the category of calls.
 The QoS parameters can be bandwidth, delay, jitter, packet delivery ratio, & throughput.
8. Support for time-sensitive traffic:
 Tactical communications & similar applications require support for time-sensitive traffic.
 The routing protocol should be able to support both hard real-time & soft real-time traffic.
9. Security and privacy:
 The routing protocol in adhoc wireless networks must be resilient to threats and vulnerabilities.
 It must have inbuilt capability to avoid resource consumption, denial-of-service, impersonation, and
similar attacks possible against an ad hoc wireless network.

Multicasting
It plays important role in emergency search & rescue operations & in military communication. Use of single- link
connectivity among the nodes in a multicast group results in a tree-shaped multicast routing topology. Such a
tree-shaped topology provides high multicast efficiency, with low packet delivery ratio due to the frequency
tree breaks. The major issues in designing multicast routing protocols are as follows:
1. Robustness:
• The multicast routing protocol must be able to recover & reconfigure quickly from potential
mobility-induced link breaks thus making it suitable for use in high dynamic environments.
2. Efficiency:
• A multicast protocol should make a minimum number of transmissions to deliver a data packet to all
the group members.
3. Control overhead:
• The scarce bandwidth availability in ad hoc wireless networks demands minimal control overhead
for the multicast session.
4. Quality of Service:
 • QoS support is essential in multicast routing because, in most cases, the data transferred in a
multicast session is time-sensitive.
5. Efficient group management:
• Group management refers to the process of accepting multicast session members and maintaining
the connectivity among them until the session expires.
6. Scalability:
• The multicast routing protocol should be able to scale for a network with a large number of node
7. Security:
• Authentication of session members and prevention of non-members from gaining unauthorized
information play a major role in military communications.

Transport Layer Protocol

o The main objectives of the transport layer protocols include :
 Setting up & maintaining end-to-end connections,
 Reliable end-to-end delivery of packets,
 Flow control &
 Congestion control.
Examples of some transport layers protocols are,
a. UDP (User Datagram Protocol ) :
 It is an unreliable connectionless transport layer protocol.
 It neither performs flow control & congestion control.
 It do not take into account the current network status such as congestion at the intermediate links,
the rate of collision, or other similar factors affecting the network throughput.
b. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol):
 It is a reliable connection-oriented transport layer protocol.
 It performs flow control & congestion control.
 Here performance degradation arises due to frequent path breaks, presence of stale routing
information, high channel error rate, and frequent network partitions.

Pricing Scheme
• Assume that an optimal route from node A to node B passes through node C, & node C is not
powered on.
• Then node A will have to set up a costlier & non-optimal route to B.
• The non-optimal path consumes more resources & affects the throughput of the system.
• As the intermediate nodes in a path that relay the data packets expend their resources such as
battery charge & computing power, they should be properly compensated.
• Hence, pricing schemes that incorporate service compensation or service reimbursement are
required.

Quality of Service Provisioning (QoS)

 QoS is the performance level of services offered by a service provider or a network to the user.
 QoS provisioning often requires ,
 Negotiation between host & the network.
 Resource reservation schemes.
 Priority scheduling &
 Call admission control.
 QoS parameters :
Applications Corresponding QoS parameter

1.Multimedia application 1. Bandwidth & Delay.

2.Military application 2.Security & Reliability.

3.Defense application 3.Finding trustworthy intermediate hosts & routing.

 4.Emergency search and rescue operations 4. Availability.

5.Hybrid wireless network 5. Maximum available link life, delay, bandwidth & channel
utilization.

6.communication among the nodes in a sensor 6. Minimum energy consumption, battery life & energy
network conservation

 QoS-aware routing :
i. Finding the path is the first step toward a QoS-aware routing protocol.
ii. The parameters that can be considered for routing decisions are,
 Network throughput.
 Packet delivery ratio.
 Reliability.
 Delay.
 Delay jitter.
 Packet loss rate.
 Bit error rate.
 Path loss.

 QoS framework :
I. A framework for QoS is a complete system that attempts to provide the promised servicesto
each user or application.
II. The key component of QoS framework is a QoS service model which defines the way user
requirements are served.

Self-Organization
• One very important property that an ad hoc wireless network should exhibit is organizing &
maintaining the network by itself.
• The major activities that an ad hoc wireless network is required to perform for self-organization are,
 Neighbor discovery.
 Topology organization &
 Topology reorganization (updating topology information)

Security
1) Security is an important issue in ad hoc wireless network as the information can be hacked.
2) Attacks against network are of 2 types :
I. Passive attack → Made by malicious node to obtain information transacted in the network without
disrupting the operation.
II. Active attack → They disrupt the operation of network.
Further active attacks are of 2 types :
o External attack: The active attacks that are executed by nodes outside the network.
o Internal attack: The active attacks that are performed by nodes belonging to the same network.

3) The major security threats that exist in ad hoc wireless networks are as follows :
 Denial of service – The attack affected by making the network resource unavailable for service to
othernodes, either by consuming the bandwidth or by overloading the system.
 Resource consumption – The scarce availability of resources in ad hoc wireless network makes it an
easy target for internal attacks, particularly aiming at consuming resources available in the network.
The major types of resource consumption attacks are,
 Energy depletion :
- Highly constrained by the energy source
- Aimed at depleting the battery power of critical nodes.
  Buffer overflow :
- Carried out either by filling the routing table with unwanted routing entries or by
consuming the data packet buffer space with unwanted data.
- Lead to a large number of data packets being dropped, leading to the loss of
critical information.

 Host impersonation – A compromised internal node can act as another node and respond with
appropriate control packets to create wrong route entries, and can terminate the traffic meant for the
intended destination node.
 Information disclosure – A compromised node can act as an informer by deliberate disclosure of
confidential information to unauthorized nodes.
 Interference – A common attack in defense applications to jam the wireless communication by creating
a wide spectrum noise.

Addressing and service discovery

 Addressing & service discovery assume significance in ad hoc wireless network due to the absence of
any centralized coordinator.
 An address that is globally unique in the connected part of the ad hoc wireless network is required for a
node in order to participate in communication.
 Auto-configuration of addresses is required to allocate non-duplicate addresses to the nodes.

Energy Management
 Energy management is defined as the process of managing the sources & consumers of energy in a node or in
the network for enhancing the lifetime of a network.
 Features of energy management are :
→Shaping the energy discharge pattern of a node’s battery to enhance battery life.
→Finding routes that consumes minimum energy.
→Using distributed scheduling schemes to improve battery life.
→Handling the processor & interface devices to minimize power consumption.
 Energy management can be classified into the following categories :
a. Transmission power management:
o The power consumed by the Radio Frequency (RF) module of a mobile node is determined by
several factors such as
* The state of operation.
*The transmission power and
*The technology used for the RF circuitry.
o The state of operation refers to transmit, receive, and sleep modes of the operation.
o The transmission power is determined by
* Reachability requirement of the network.
* Routing protocol and
* MAC protocol employed.
b. Battery energy management:
o The battery management is aimed at extending the battery life of a node by taking advantage of
its chemical properties, discharge patterns, and by the selection of a battery from a set of
batteries that is available for redundancy.
c. Processor power management:
o The clock speed and the number of instructions executed per unit time are some of the
processorparameters that affect power consumption.
o The CPU can be put into different power saving modes during low processing load conditions.
o The CPU power can be completely turned off if the machines is idle for a long time. In such a cases,
interrupts can be used to turn on the CPU upon detection of user interaction or other events.
d. Devices power management:
o Intelligent device management can reduce power consumption of a mobile node significantly.
 o This can be done by the operating system( OS) by selectively powering down interface devices
that are not used or by putting devices into different power saving modes, depending on their
usage.

Scalability
 Scalability is the ability of the routing protocol to scale well in a network with a large number of nodes.
 It requires minimization of control overhead & adaptation of the routing protocol to the network size.

Deployment Considerations
The deployment of a commercial ad hoc wireless network has the following benefits when compared to wired
networks
a) Low cost of deployment :
o The use of multi-hop wireless relaying eliminates the requirement of cables & maintenance
indeployment of communication infrastructure.
o The cost involved is much lower than that of wired networks.
b) Incremental deployment :
o Deployment can be performed increment all over geographical regions of the city.
o The deployed part of the network starts functioning immediately after the minimum configuration
is done.
c) Short deployment time :
o Compared to wired networks, the deployment time is considerably less due to the absence of
anywired links.
d) Re-configurability :
o The cost involved in reconfiguring a wired network covering a Metropolitan Area Network(MAN) is
very high compared to that of an ad hoc wireless network covering the same service area.

The following are the major issues to be considered in deploying an ad hoc wireless network :
a) Scenario of deployment :
 The scenario of deployment has significance because the capability required for a mobile node varies
with the environment in which it is used.
 The following are some of the different scenarios in which the deployment issues vary widely :
- Military deployment :
It can be either,
 Data-centric network : Handle a different pattern of data traffic & can be partially comprised of
static nodes.
Eg : a wireless sensor network.

 User-centric network: Consists of highly mobile nodes with or without any support from any
infrastructure.
Eg :soldiers or armored vehicles carrying soldiers equipped with wireless
communication devices.
- Emergency operations deployment :
o Demands a quick deployment of rescue personnel equipped with hand-held communication
equipment.
o The network should provide support for time-sensitive traffic such as voice & video.
o Short data messaging can be used in case the resource constraints do not permit voice
communication.
- Commercial wide-area deployment :
o Eg : wireless mesh networks.
o The aim of the deployment is to provide an alternate communication infrastructure for
wireless communication in urban areas & areas where a traditional cellular base station
cannot handle the traffic volume.
- Home network deployment :
 o Deployment needs to consider the limited range of the devices that are to be connected
by the network.
o Eg : short transmission range avoid network partitions.

b) Required longevity of network :

 If the network is required for a short while, battery-powered mobile nodes can be used.
 If the connectivity is required for a longer duration of time, fixed radio relaying equipment with
regenerative power sources can be deployed.
c) Area of coverage :
 Determined by the nature of application for which the network is set up.
 Eg : the home area network is limited to the surroundings of a home.
 The mobile nodes’ capabilities such as the transmission range& associated hardware, software, &
power source should match the area of coverage required.
d) Service availability :
 Defined as the ability of an ad hoc wireless network to provide service even with the failure of certain
nodes.
 Has significance in a Fully mobile ad hoc wireless network used for tactical communication & in
partially fixed ad hoc wireless network used in commercial communication infrastructure such
as wireless mesh networks.
e) Operational integration with other infrastructure :
 Considered for improving the performance or gathering additional information, or for providing better
QoS.
 In military environment, integration of ad hoc wireless networks with satellite networks or unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) improves the capability of the ad hoc wireless networks.
f) Choice of protocol :
 The choice of protocols at different layers of the protocol stack is to be done taking into consideration
the deployment scenario.
 A TDMA-based & insecure MAC protocol may not be the best suited compared to a CDMA-based MAC
protocol for a military application.

AD HOC WIRELESS INTERNET

 Ad hoc wireless internet extends the services of the internet to the end users over an ad hoc
wireless network.
 Some of the applications of ad hoc wireless internet are :
 Wireless mesh network.
 Provisioning of temporary internet services to major conference venues.
 Sports venues.
 Temporary military settlements.
 Battlefields &
 Broadband internet services in rural regions.
 The major issues to be considered for a successful ad hoc wireless internet are the following :
 Gateway:
o They are the entry points to the wired internet.
o Generally owned & operated by a service provider.
o They perform following tasks ,
- Keeping track of end users.
- Bandwidth management.
- Load balancing.
- Traffic shaping.
- Packet filtering.
- Width fairness &
- Address, service & location discovery.
 Figure 5.7 Schematic diagram of ad hoc wireless internet
 Address mobility:

o This problem is worse here as the nodes operate over multiple wireless hops.
o Solution such as Mobile IP can provide temporary alternative.
 Routing :
o It is a major problem in ad hoc wireless internet, due to dynamic topological changes, the presence
of gateways, multi-hop relaying, & the hybrid character of the network.
o Possible solution is to use separate routing protocol for the wireless part of ad hoc
wirelessinternet.
 Transport layer protocol :
o Several factors are to be considered here, the major one being the state maintenance overhead at the
gateway nodes.
 Load balancing :
o They are essential to distribute the load so as to avoid the situation where the gateway nodes
become bottleneck nodes.
 Pricing / Billing:
o Since internet bandwidth is expensive, it becomes very important to introduce pricing/billing
strategies for the ad hoc wireless internet.
 Provisioning of security:
o Security is a prime concern since the end users can utilize the ad hoc wireless internet infrastructure
to make e-commerce transaction.
 QoS support :
 With the widespread use of voice over IP (VOIP) & growing multimedia applications over the
internet, provisioning of QoS support in the ad hoc wireless internet becomes a very important issue.
 Service, address & location discovery:
o Service discovery refers to the activity of discovering or identifying the party which provides service or
resource.
o Address discovery refers to the services such as those provided by Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)
or Domain Name Service (DNS) operating within the wireless domain.
o Location discovery refers to different activities such as detecting the location of a particular mobile
node in the network or detecting the geographical location of nodes.
Resource Constraints
 Two essential and limited resources are battery life and processing power.
 Devices used in adhoc wireless networks require portability, and hence they also have size and weight
constraints along with the restrictions on the power source.
 Increasing the battery power and processing ability makes the nodes bulky and less portable.

Characteristics of an Ideal Routing Protocol for ad hoc wireless networks

A routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks should have the following characteristics:
 It must be fully distributed as centralized routing involves high control overhead and hence is not
scalable.
 It must be adaptive to frequent topology changes caused by the mobility of nodes.
 Route computation and maintenance must involve a minimum number of nodes. Each node in the
network must have quick access to routes, that is, minimum connection setup time is desired.
 It must be localized, as global state maintenance involves a huge state propagation control overhead.
 It must be loop-free and free from state routes.
 The number of packet collisions must be kept to a minimum by limiting the number of broadcasts made
by each node. The transmissions should be reliable to reduce message loss and to prevent the
occurrence of state routes.
 It must converge to optimal routes once the network topology becomes stable. The convergence must be
quick.
 It must optimally use scarce resources such as bandwidth, computing power, memory, and battery power.
 Every node in the network should try to store information regarding the stable local topology only.
Changes in remote parts of the network must not cause updates in the topology information maintained
by the node.
 It should be able to provide a certain level of quality of service (QoS) as demanded by the applications,
and should also offer support for time-sensitive traffic.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF ROUTING PROTOCOLS

A classification tree is shown below:

The routing protocol for adhoc wireless networks can be broadly classified into 4 categories based on
 Routing information update mechanism.
 Use of temporal information for routing
 Routing topology
 Utilization of specific resources.
Based on the routing information update mechanism
Ad hoc wireless network routing protocols can be classified into 3 major categories based on the routing
information update mechanism. They are:
 Proactive or table-driven routing protocols :
o Every node maintains the network topology information in the form of routing tables by
periodically exchanging routing information.
o Routing information is generally flooded in the whole network.
o Whenever a node requires a path to a destination, it runs an appropriate path-finding algorithm
on the topology information it maintains.
 Reactive or on-demand routing protocols:
o Do not maintain the network topology information.
o Obtain the necessary path when it is required, by using a connection establishment process.
 Hybrid routing protocols:
o Combine the best features of the above two categories.
o Nodes within a certain distance from the node concerned, or within a particular geographical
region, are said to be within the routing zone of the given node.
o For routing within this zone, a table-driven approaches used.
o For nodes that are located beyond this zone, an on-demand approach is used.

Based on the use of temporal information for routing

The protocols that fall under this category can be further classified into two types :
 Routing protocols using past temporal information:
o Use information about the past status of the links or the status of links at the time of routing to
make routing decisions.
 Routing protocols that use future temporal information:
o Use information about the about the expected future status of the wireless links to make
approximate routing decisions.
o Apart from the lifetime of wireless links, the future status information also includes information
regarding the lifetime of the node, prediction of location, and prediction of link availability.

Based on the routing topology

Ad hoc wireless networks, due to their relatively smaller number of nodes, can make use of either a flat
topology or a hierarchical topology for routing.
 Flat topology routing protocols:
o Make use of a flat addressing scheme similar to the one used in IEEE 802.3 LANs.
o It assumes the presence of a globally unique addressing mechanism for nodes in an ad hoc
wireless network.
 Hierarchical topology routing protocols:
o Make use of a logical hierarchy in the network and an associated addressing scheme.
o The hierarchy could be based on geographical information or it could be based on hop distance.

Based on the utilization of specific resources

 Power-aware routing:
o Aims at minimizing the consumption of a very important resource in the ad hoc wireless
networks: the battery power.
o The routing decisions are based on minimizing the power consumption either logically or
globally in the network.
 Geographical information assisted routing :
o Improves the performance of routing and reduces the control overhead by effectively utilizing
the geographical information available.

TABLE-DRIVEN ROUTING PROTOCOLS

 These protocols are extensions of the wired network routing protocols
  They maintain the global topology information in the form of tables at every node.
 Tables are updated frequently in order to maintain consistent and accurate network state information
 Ex: Destination sequenced distance vector routing protocol (DSDV), wireless routing protocol (WRP),
source-tree adaptive routing protocol (STAR) and cluster-head gateway switch routing protocol
(CGSR).

Destination sequenced distance-vector routing protocol

 It is an enhanced version of the distributed Bellman-Ford algorithm where each node maintains a table
that contains the shortest distance and the first node on the shortest path to every other node in the
network.
 It incorporates table updates with increasing sequence number tags to prevent loops, to counter the
count-to-infinity problem, and for faster convergence.
 As it is a table-driven routing protocol, routes to all destinations are readily available at every node at
all times.
 The tables are exchanged between neighbors at regular intervals to keep an up-to-date view of the
network topology.
 The table updates are of two types:
o Incremental updates: Takes a single network data packet unit (NDPU). These are used when a
node does not observe significant changes in the local topology.
o Full dumps: Takes multiple NDPUs. It is done either when the local topology changes significantly
or when an incremental update requires more than a single NDPU.
 Table updates are initiated by a destination with a new sequence number which is always greater than
the previous one.

 Consider the example as shown in figure (a). Here node 1 is the source node and node 15 is the
destination. As all the nodes maintain global topology information, the route is already available as shown
in figure (b).
 Here the routing table node 1 indicates that the shortest route to the destination node is available
through node 5 and the distance to it is 4 hops, as depicted in figure (b)
 The reconfiguration of a path used by an on-going data transfer session is handled by the protocol in the
following way.
 The end node of the broken link initiates a table update message with the broken link’s weight assigned
to infinity (∞) and with a sequence number greater than the stored sequence number for that
destination.
 Each node upon receiving an update with weight ∞, quickly disseminates it to its neighbors in order to
propagate the broken-link information to the whole network.
 A node always assign an odd number to the link break update to differentiate it from the even sequence
number generated by the destination.
 Figure 7.6 shows the case when node 11 moves from its current position.
Advantages
 Less delay involved in the route setup process.
 Mechanism of incremental update with sequence number tags makes the existing wired network
protocols adaptable to ad hoc wireless networks.
 The updates are propagated throughout the network in order to maintain an up-to-date view of the
network topology at all nodes.
Disadvantages
 The updates due to broken links lead to a heavy control overhead during high mobility.
 Even a small network with high mobility or a large network with low mobility can completely choke the
available bandwidth.
 Suffers from excessive control overhead.
 In order to obtain information about a particular destination node, a node has to wait for a table update
message initiated by the same destination node.
 This delay could result in state routing information at nodes.

Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP)

 WRP is similar to DSDV; it inherits the properties of the distributed bellman-ford algorithm.
 To counter the count-to-infinity problem and to enable faster convergence, it employs a unique method
of maintaining information regarding the shortest distance to every destination node in the network
and pen ultimate hop node on the path to every destination node.
 Maintains an up-to-date view of the network, every node has a readily available route to every
destination node in the network.
 It differs from DSDV in table maintenance and in the update procedures.
 While DSDV maintains only one topology table, WRP uses a set of tables to maintain more accurate
information.
 The table that are maintained by a node are :
o Distance table (DT): contains the network view of the neighbors of a node. It contains a matrix
where each element contains the distance and the penultimate node reported by the neighbor
for a particular destination.
o Routing table (RT): contains the up-to-date view of the network for all known destinations. It
keeps the shortest distance, the predecessor/penultimate node, the successor node, and a flag
indicating the status of the path. The path status may be a simplest(correct) path or a loop
(error),or destination node not marked (null).
 o Link cost table (LCT): contains the cost of relaying messages through each link. The cost of
broken link is ∞.it also contains the number of update periods passed since the last successful
update was received from that link.
o Message retransmission list (MRL): contains an entry for every update message that is to be
retransmitted and maintains a counter for each entry.
 After receiving the update message, a node not only updates the distance for transmitted neighbors but
also checks the other neighbors’ distance, hence convergence is much faster than DSDV.

 Consider the example shown in figure below, where the source of the route is node 1 and destination is
node 15. As WRP proactively maintains the route to all destinations, the route to any destination node is
readily available at the source node.
 From the routing table shown, the route from node 1 to node 15 has the next node as node 2. The
predecessor node of 15 corresponding to this route is route 12. The predecessor information helps WRP
to converge quickly during link breaks.

 When a node detects a link break, it sends an update message to its neighbors with the link cost of the
broken link set to ∞. After receiving the update message; all affected nodes update their minimum
distances to the corresponding nodes. The node that initiated the update message then finds an
alternative route, if available from its DT. Figure 7.8 shows route maintenance in WRP.
Advantages
 WRP has the same advantages as that of DSDV.
 It has faster convergence and involves fewer table updates.
Disadvantages
 The complexity of maintenance of multiple tables demands a larger memory and greater processing
power from nodes in the adhoc wireless network.
 It is not suitable for highly dynamic and also for very large ad hoc wireless networks.

Cluster-Head Gateway Switch Routing Protocol (CGSR)

 Uses a hierarchical network topology.
 CGSR organizes nodes into clusters, with coordination among the members of each cluster entrusted to
a special node named cluster-head.
 This cluster-head is elected dynamically by employing a least cluster change(LCC) algorithm.
  According to this algorithm, a node ceases to be a cluster-head only if it comes under the range of another
cluster-head, where the tie is broken either using the lowest ID or highest connectivity algorithm.
 Clustering provides a mechanism to allocate bandwidth, which is a limited resource, among different
clusters, thereby improving reuse.
 A token-based scheduling is used within a cluster for sharing the bandwidth among the members of the
cluster.
 CGRS assumes that all communication passes through the cluster-head. Communication between 2
clusters takes place through the common member nodes that are members of both the cluster are called
gateways.
 A gateway is expected to be able to listen to multiple spreading codes that are currently in operation in
the clusters in which the node exist as a member.
 A gateway conflict is said to occur when a cluster-head issues a token to a gateway over spreading code
while the gateway is tuned to another code.
 Gateways that are capable of simultaneously communicating over two interfaces can avoid gateway
conflicts.
 The performance of routing is influenced by token scheduling and code scheduling that is handled at
cluster-headstand gateways, respectively.
 Every member node maintains a routing table containing the destination cluster-head for every node in
the network.
 In addition to the cluster member table, each node maintains a routing table which keeps the list of next-
hop nodes for reaching every destination cluster.
 The cluster routing protocol is used here.
 Figure below shows the cluster head, cluster gateways, and normal cluster member nodes in an ad hoc
wireless network.
Advantages
 CGSR is a hierarchical routing scheme which
enables partial coordination between nodes by
electing cluster-heads.
 Better bandwidth utilization is possible.
 Easy to implement priority scheduling schemes
with token scheduling and gateway code
scheduling.
Disadvantages
 Increase in path length and instability in the
system at high mobility when the rate of change
of cluster-head is high.
 In order to avoid gateway conflicts, more
resources are required.
 The power consumption at the cluster-head node
is also a matter of concern.
 Lead to Frequent changes in the cluster-head,
which may result in multiple path breaks.

Source-Tree Adaptive Routing Protocol (STAR)

 Key concept  least overhead routing approach (LORA)
 This protocol attempts to provide feasible paths that are not guaranteed to be optimal
 Involves much less control overhead
 In STAR protocol, every node broadcasts its source tree information
 The source tree of a node consists of the wireless links used by the node
 Every node builds a partial graph of the topology
 During initialization, a node sends an update message to its neighbors
 Each node will have a path to every destination node
  The path would be sub-optimal
 The data packet contains information about the path to be traversed in order to prevent the possibility
of routing loop formation
 In the presence of a reliable broadcast mechanism, STAR assumes implicit route maintenance
 In addition to path breaks, the intermediate nodes are responsible for handling the routing loops
 The Route Repair packet contains the complete source tree of node k and the traversed path of the
packet
 When an intermediate node receives a Route Repair update message, it removes itself from the top of
the route repair path and reliably sends it to the head of the route repair path

Advantages
 Very low communication overhead
 Reduces the average control overhead

ON-DEMAND ROUTING PROTOCOLS

They execute the path-finding process and exchange routing information only when a path is required by a
node to communicate with a destination

Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (DSR)

 Designed to restrict the bandwidth consumed by control packets in adhoc wireless networks by
eliminating the periodic table update messages
 It is beacon-less and does not require periodic hello packet transmissions
 Basic approach  to establish a route by flooding RouteRequestpackets in the network
 Destination node responds by sending a RouteReply packet back tothe source
 Each RouteRequest carries a sequence number generatedby the source node and the path it has
traversed
 A node checks the sequence number on the packet before forwarding it
 The packet is forwarded only if it is not a duplicate RouteRequest
 The sequence number on the packet is used to prevent loop formations and to avoid multiple
transmissions
 Thus, all nodes except the destination forward a RouteRequest packet during the route construction
phase
 In figure 7.10, source node 1 initiates a RouteRequest packet to obtain a path for destination node 15
 This protocol uses a route cache that stores all possible information extracted from the source route
contained in a data packet
 During network partitions, the affected nodes initiate RouteRequestpackets
 DSR also allows piggy-backing of a data packet on the RouteRequest
 As a part of optimizations, if the intermediate nodes are also allowed to originate RouteReply packets,
then a source node may receive multiple replies from intermediate nodes
 In fig 7.11, if the intermediate node 10 has a route to the destination via node 14, it also sends the
RouteReply tothe source node
 The source node selects the latest and best route and uses that for sending data packets
 Each data packet carries the complete pathtoits destination
 If a linkbreaks, source node again initiates the route discovery process
Advantages
 Uses a reactive approach which eliminates the need to periodically flood the network with table update
messages
 Route is established only when required
 Reduce control overhead

Disadvantages
 Route maintenancemechanismdoes not locally repair a broken link
 Stale route cache information could resultin inconsistencies duringroute construction phase
 Connection set up delay is higher
 Performance degrades rapidly with increasingmobility
 Routing overhead is more & directly proportional topath length

Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol

 Route is established only when it is required by a source node for transmitting datapackets
 It employs destination sequence numbers toidentify the most recent path
 Source node and intermediate nodes store the next hop information corresponding to each flow for
data packet transmission
 Uses DestSeqNum todetermine an up-to-date pathtothe destination
 A RouteRequest carries the source identifier, the destination identifier, the source sequence number,
the destination sequence number, the broadcastidentifier and the time tolive field
 DestSeqNum indicates thefreshness of the route that is accepted by the source
 When an intermediatenode receives a RouteRequest, it either forwards it or prepares a RouteReply if it
has a valid route tothe destination
 The validity of the intermediatenode is determinedby comparingthe sequence numbers
 If a RouteRequestis received multiple times, thenduplicate copies are discarded
 Every intermediatenode enters the previous node address and its BcastID
 A timer is used to delete this entry in case a RouteReply packet is not received
 AODV does not repair a broken path locally
 When a linkbreaks, the end nodes are notified
 Source node re-establishes the routetothe destination if required

Advantage
 Routes are established on demand and DestSeqNum are used tofind latest route tothe destination
 Connection setup delay is less

Disadvantages
 Intermediate nodes can lead toinconsistentroutes if the source sequence numberis very old
  Multiple RouteReply packets tosingle RouteRequest packet can lead toheavy control overhead
 Periodic beaconing leads tounnecessary bandwidthconsumption

Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA)

 Source-initiated on-demand routing protocol
 Uses a linkreversal algorithm
 Provides loop free multi path routes tothe destination
 Each node maintains its one-loop local topology information
 Has capability todetect partitions
 Unique property  limiting the control packets to a small region during the reconfiguration process
initiated by a path break

 TORA has 3 main functions: establishing, maintainingand erasingroutes

 The route establishment function is performed only when a node requires a path to a destination but
does not have any directed link
 This process establishes a destination-oriented directed acyclic graph usinga query/update mechanism
 Once the path to the destination is obtained, it is considered to exist as long as the path is available,
irrespective of the path length changes due to the re-configurations that may take place duringthe course
of data transfer session
 If the node detects a partition, it originated a clear message, which erases the existing path information
in that partition relatedtothe destination
Advantages
 Incur less control overhead
 Concurrent detection of partitions
 Subsequent deletion of routes

Disadvantages
 Temporary oscillations and transient loops
  Local reconfiguration of paths result in non-optimal routes

Location-Aided Routing (LAR)

 It utilizes the location information for improving the efficiency of routing by reducing the control
overhead
 LAR assumes the availability of the global positioning system (GPS) for obtaining the geographical
position information necessary for routing
 LAR designates two geographical regions for selective forwarding of control packets, namely,
ExpectedZone and RequestZone
 The ExpectedZone is the region in which the destination node is expected to be present, given
information regarding its location in the past and its mobility information
 The RequestZone is a geographical region within which the path-finding control packets are permitted
to be propagated
 This area is determinedby the sender of a data transfer session.
 The control packets used for path-finding are forwarded by nodes which are present in the
RequestZone and are discarded by nodes outsidethe zone
 LAR uses flooding, but here flooding is restricted toa small geographical region
 The nodes decide to forward or discard the control packets based on two algorithms, namely, LAR1 &
LAR2

 In the LAR1 algorithm (fig 7.16), the source node explicitly specifies the RequestZone in the
RouteRequest packet whichis broadcast toits neighbors
 These nodes verify their own geographical locations tocheckwhether they belong tothe ExpectedZone
 Finally, when the RouteRequest reaches the destination node, it originates a RouteReply that contains
the current location and current time of the node
 In LAR2 algorithm (fig 7.17), the source node includes the distance between itself and the destination
node
 When the intermediatenode receives this RouteRequest packet, it computesthe distance tothe node D
 A RouteRequest packet is forwarded only once and the distance between the forwarding node and Dis
updated in the RouteRequest packet for further relaying
 In order to compensate for the location error, a larger RequestZone that can accommodate the amount
of error that occurred is considered

Advantage
 LAR reduces the control overhead by limitingthe searcharea for finding a path
 Efficient use of geographical position information
 Reduced control overhead
 Increased utilization of bandwidth
Disadvantage
 Depends heavily on the availability of GPS infrastructure.
 Hence, cannot be used in situations where there is noaccess tosuch information

Associativity-Based Routing (ABR)

 It is a distributed routing protocol that selects routesbased on the stability of the wireless links
 It is a beacon-based on-demand routing protocol
 A link is classified as stable or unstable based on its temporalstability
 The temporal stability is determined by counting the periodic beacons that a node receives from its
neighbors
 Each node maintains the count of its neighbor’s beacons and classifies each linkas stable or unstable
 The link corresponding to a stable neighbor is termed as a stable link, while a link to an unstable
neighbor is called an unstable link
 A source node floods RouteRequest packets throughout the network if a route is not available in its
route cache
 All intermediate nodes forwardthe RouteRequest packet
 A RouteRequest packet carries the path it has traversed and the beacon count for the corresponding
nodes in the path
 When the first RouteRequest reaches the destination, the destination waits for a time period T to
receive multiple RouteRequests throughdifferentpaths
 If twopaths have the same proportion of stable links, the shorter of them is selected
 If more than one path is available, then a random path among them is selected as the path between
source and destination

 In figure 7.18, source node initiates the RouteRequest to the flooded for finding a route to the
destination node
 Solid lines represent stablelinks
 Dotted lines represent unstablelinks
 ABR uses stability information only during theroute selection process at the destination node
 If a link break occurs at an intermediate node, the node closer to the source, which detects the break,
initiates a local route repair process
 In this process, the node locally broadcasts a route repair packet, termed the local query (LQ)
broadcast, with a limited time tolive (TTL), as shown in figure 7.19
 This way a broken link is bypassed locally without flooding a new RouteRequest packet in the whole
network.
Advantage
 Stable routes have a higher preferencecomparedtoshorter routes
 They result in fewer path breaks which, in turn, reduces the extent of flooding due to reconfiguration of
paths in the network
Disadvantage
 Chosen path may be longer than the shortest path between the source and destination because of the
preference given tostable paths
 Repetitive LQ broadcasts may result in high delays during route repairs

Signal Stability-Based Adaptive Routing Protocol (SSA)

 Uses signal stability as the prime factor for finding stableroutes
 This protocol is beacon-based, in which signal strength of the beacon is measured for determining link
stability
 The signal strength is used toclassify a linkas stable or unstable
 This protocol consists of two parts: forwarding protocol (FP) and dynamic routingprotocol (DRP)
 These protocols use an extended radio interfacethat measures the signalstrength from beacons
 DRP maintains the routingtable by interacting with theDRP processes on other hosts
 FP performs the actual routing toforward a packet on its way to the destination
 Every node maintains a table that contains the beacon count and the signal strength of each of its
neighbors
 If a node receives strong beacons, then linkis classified as strong/stable link
 The linkis otherwise classified as weak/unstable link
 Each node maintains a table called the signal stability table (SST) which is based on the signal strengths
of its neighbors’ beacons
 This table is used by the nodes in the path to the destination to forward the incoming RouteRequest
over strong links for finding the most stable end-to-end path
 A source node which does not have a route to the destination floods the network with RouteRequest
packets
 SSA protocol process a RouteRequestonly if it is received over a strong link
 A RouteRequest received through a weaklinkis dropped without being processed
 The destination selects the first RouteRequest packetreceived over strong links
 The destination initiates a RouteReply packet tonotify the selected route tothe source
 In figure 7.20, source node broadcasts a RouteRequest for finding the route tothe destination node
 Solid lines represent the stable links
 Dotted lines represent the weaklinks
 SSA restricts intermediate nodes from forwarding a RouteRequest packet if the packet has been
received over a weaklink
 When a linkbreaks, the end nodes of the broken link notify the corresponding end nodes of the path
 A source node, after receiving a route break notification packet, rebroadcasts the RouteRequest tofind
another stable path tothe destination
 Stale entries are removed only if data packets that use the stale route information fail to reach the next
node
 If no strong path is available when a linkgets broken, then the new route is established by considering
weaklinks also
 This is done when multiple RouteRequest attempts fail to obtain a path to the destination using only the
stable links
Advantage
 Finds more stable routes whencomparedtothe shortest path routeselection protocols
 Accommodates temporal stability by using beacon counts toclassify a linkas stable or weak

Disadvantage
 It puts a strong RouteRequest forwarding condition which results in RouteRequestfailures
 Multiple flooding of RouteRequest packets consumes significant amount of bandwidth
 Increases the path setuptime
 Strong linkcriterion increases the path length

Flow-Oriented Routing Protocol (FORP)

 Employs a prediction-based multi-hop-handoff mechanism for supporting time-sensitive traffic in
adhoc wireless networks
 Proposed for IPv6-based ad hoc wireless networks where QoS needs tobe provided
 The multi-hop-handoff is aimed at alleviating the effects of path breaks on the real time packetflows
 A sender or an intermediate node initiates the route maintenance process only after detecting a link
break
 It may result in high packet loss leading toa low QoS provided tothe user
 FORP utilizes the mobility and location information of nodes toestimate the linkexpiration time(LET)
 LET is the approximate lifetime of a given wireless link
 The minimum of the LET values of all wireless links on a path is termed as the route expiry time(RET)
 Every node is assumed tobe able topredict the LET of each of its links with its neighbors
 The LET between twonodes can be estimated using information such as current position of the nodes,
their direction of movement, and their transmission ranges
 FORP requires the availability of GPS information in order toidentify the location of nodes
 When a sender node needs to setup a real time flow to a particular destination, it checks its routing
table for the availability of a route to that destination
 If a route is available, then that is used tosend packets to the destination
 Otherwise sender broadcasts a flow-REQ packet carrying information regarding the source and
destination nodes
 The Flow-REQ packet also carries a flow identification number/sequence number which is unique for
every session
 A neighbor node, on receiving this packet, first checks if the sequence numberof the received Flow-REQ
is higher than the sequence number corresponding toprevious packet
 If the sequence number on the packet is less than that of the previous packet, then the packet is
discarded
 This is done to avoid looping of flow-REQ packets
  The Flow-REQ packet, when received at the destination node, contains the list of nodes on the path it
had traversed, along with the LET values of every wireless linkon that path
 FORP assumes all the nodes in the network to be synchronized to a common time by means of GPS
information

Advantage
 Use of LET and RET estimates reduces pathbreaks
 Reduces the reduction in packetdelivery
 Reduces number of out-of-order packets
 Reduces non-optimal paths

Disadvantage
 Works well when topology is highly dynamic
 Requirements of time synchronization increases the control overhead
 Dependency on GPS infrastructure affects the operability of this protocol wherever it is not available