Intelligent Routing in Directional Ad Hoc Networks Through Predictive Directional Heat Map From Spatio-Temporal Deep Learning

By applying a simple shortest/minimum-cost routing algorithm, the mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) with heavy data transmissions may be easily congested if multiple routes meet at the same relay node. Therefore, those busy nodes should be avoided when a new path is established. The task of optimal path seeking becomes more challenging when a MANET is equipped with directional antennas that may cause directional interference with neighboring receivers. The motivation of our research is to build an intelligent proactive routing scheme for MANETs with directional antennas. Our directional routing protocol considers not only the global traffic distribution in different areas of the MANET, but also the properties of directional antennas. It uses a spatio-temporal deep learning algorithm to predict the next-time snapshot of a directional heat map (DHM), which shows the traffic density distribution in each network location as well as the coverage of each directional antenna. The DHM is then used to identify the optimal path that can avoid congested areas as well as the interference from all neighboring directional links. Furthermore, an optimization algorithm is designed to perform optimal path selection. It splits a single path into multiple paths converge later on into one path, if the path needs to go around a congested area. Therefore, our routing scheme achieves better quality-of-service (QoS) performance than existing routing schemes.