Updating Route Information in Mobile AD Hoc Networks

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is composed of moving wireless hosts that within range of each other form wireless networks. For communication to occur between hosts that are not within each other s range, routes involving intermediate nodes should be established. However, due to the mobility of the nodes finding routes in a MANET is quite a challenging task and takes up a lot of system resources such as bandwidth and battery power. Although, it would be wise to take full advantage of the already discovered paths, many algorithms simply discard the paths if their topology has changed. To overcome this shortcoming, we have proposed a routing table maintenance algorithm that responds to the changes in network topology promptly and adjusts the paths so that their lifetimes could be maximized.