Performance study of proactive flow handoff for mobile ad hoc networks

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile computers forming a temporary network without any existing wire line infrastructure. Searching for feasible paths, or routing, is very challenging in mobile ad hoc networks because of frequent topology changes caused by users' mobility. Location information is required by some applications and can be used to facilitate routing implementation. In this paper, we propose a proactive flow handoff method based on nodes' location information. In summary, location information is utilised to reduce the control overhead in route discovery phase, to search quickly for a feasible path upon link breakage, and to hand off a flow to a stable path if the active one breaks based on predication. Keeping "always-on" end-to-end connectivity once a flow is established is the main advantage of this routing method. A thorough simulation study is performed to demonstrate the efficiency of this method.