On route exploration capabilities of multi-path routing in variable topology ad hoc networks

The observation that while the ultimate goal of a routing protocol is delivering data along the optimal in some sense (primary) route, maintaining multiple routes through multipath routing may have a beneficial effect on the network performance due to keeping track of the optimal route in a variable topology network. Topology changes may be due to node mobility in mobile ad hoc networks, or limited node reliability and power supply in sensor networks. Proposed in (V. Marbukh, IEEE Wireless Network. Comm. Conf., 2003) a decision theoretic framework for performance/resilience optimized multipath routing in networks with unstable topologies frames the problem as a minimum cost routing with uncertain link costs. This paper (a) extends this framework by assuming that uncertainty in the link costs may be reduced by increasing the data transmission rate over this link due to higher rate of acknowledgements arriving at the source, and (b) proposes an approximation for the optimal load split among feasible routes. Future efforts should be directed towards evaluation and practical implementation of the proposed routing algorithms.