An application-driven path discovery mechanism for MANET routing protocols

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), a layered approach to networks makes a routing protocol to be responsible on discovery of a path between two nodes. However, this approach has fundamental limitations in diversifying the strategies of routing in a network when various types of applications require different routing support. In this paper, we propose an application-driven path discovery mechanism. In the proposed architecture, a routing packet controller resides in each MANET node and each application can control path discovery process by installing rules in the routing packet controller. Several examples are described to show the feasibility of our approach.