Standardisation advancements in the area of routing for mobile ad-hoc networks

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are self-organized and fully distributed networks that rely on the collaboration of participating devices to route data from source to destination. The MANET paradigm is expected to enable ubiquitous mobile communication and thus the proliferation of pervasive applications. The MANET Working Group (WG) of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is responsible for standardizing an appropriate Internet Protocol (IP) based routing protocol functionality for both static (mesh) and dynamic (mobile) wireless ad hoc network topologies. In this paper, we provide a background on the possibility to use MANETs for enabling future pervasive internet and innovative ubiquitous services. We also describe the work achieved by the MANET WG thus far on the area of secure unicast and multicast routing for MANETs. We also examine non-IETF work on this area, chiefly based on adaptive and hybrid routing. The paper then presents comparative performance evaluations of discussed routing protocols. It is mainly observed that there is a need for adaptive hybrid routing approaches in order to support future innovative and pervasive applications. Consequently, we present our conclusions.