Improving Routing Path Stability in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks That Use a CDS Control Plane

In this paper we examine mobile routing path stability performance when constrained to use a distributed connected dominating set (CDS) control plane induced sub graph. Weighted, degree-based Essential CDS (ECDS) results are presented alongside those obtained using a CDS temporal stabilization algorithm. Full topology shortest path forwarding (SPF) results are also presented as a comparison baseline. We present a set of metric-based path stability statistics that demonstrate a significant improvement in routing path lifetime statistics when using ECDS election stabilization. We include mobile networking models with varying wireless link quality that creates stability challenges even without considering mobility. Temporal link quality is also used to derive an Expected Transmission Count (ETX) link quality-based routing metric that is used in the routing stability study. The results show significant improvement in lifetimes for the ECDS election stabilization mode but at the price of additional average routing stretch.