NDj - AODV: Node disjoint multipath routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks based on AODV protocol

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks are wireless networks which comprise of mobile nodes that communicate over wireless media. Frequent link failures may occur in these networks due to mobility, energy depletion of node, transmission interference. Link failure leads to disconnectivity among nodes in the network and hinders ongoing data transmission. Traditional routing protocols provide best effort service in transporting data from source to destination. They are not designed to handle link failures that may arise sporadically. This paper proposes a node-disjoint routing technique NDj-AODV that discovers multiple node-disjoint routes to the destination. The proposed technique can be used for load balancing, QoS based routing, and more specifically for performing energy aware routing. We overhaul AODV route discovery and maintenance procedures to find multiple node-disjoint routes to destination. Our protocol does not use the path accumulation feature employed by most node-disjoint routing techniques rather it exploits the concept of overhearing in wireless medium to distinguish between two paths as node-disjoint. Simulation results obtained using ns-2.34 simulator show efficiency of our technique in terms of finding several node disjoint routes with a minimal routing overhead and high percentage of data packet delivery ratios and reduced average end-to-end delays.