Multilayer flavoured dynamic source routing in mobile ad-hoc networks

Dynamic source routing (DSR, introduced in 1996) is one of the most frequently used routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). Numerous MANET protocols were created based on DSR´s algorithm. In addition to inheriting the overall performance specifications of DSR, these MANET protocols are designed to perform optimised for specific functionality. To name a few, these functionalities include: hierarchical routing, security-aware routing and multipath routing. Such flavoured DSR schemes (X-DSR) are often compared against the original DSR protocol through simulation results. The purpose of this survey is to first introduce DSR in detail, discuss most of the DSR flavours, point out their specific features, and to present a complete survey of the analyses given in the current literature against the original DSR protocol. Following this in-depth discussion, we introduce an X-DSR-aware management architecture, which utilises a multilayer scheme that imports parameters from different layers (network, data-link and physical) and performs current network condition matching compared to the closest pre-defined network condition groups. The output of such a match is the selection of the most optimal routing protocol, which satisfies most of the criteria of the predefined condition group.