Analysis of randomized congestion control in DSDV routing

We consider a randomized version of the Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) routing protocol for ad hoc networks, called R-DSDV. We are concerned with the capabilities of R-DSDV with respect to distributed congestion control. We present an analytical study based on a novel approach that uses Markov chains representing the distribution of routing information over the network. Our analysis indicates that: a probabilistic congestion control scheme based on local tuning of protocol parameters is feasible; and such a mechanism can be effective in reducing the amount of traffic routed through a node which is temporarily congested. The traffic reduction is almost linear with respect to the decrease in the R-DSDV routing table advertisement rate of the congested node. On the average, the convergence time is relatively small as compared to the transmission rates of protocol messages