Temporally robust relay sets for mobile wireless networks

Existing relay set election algorithms used for self-organizing mobile ad hoc network (MANET) [1] routing control and data forwarding are often designed to continuously minimize the relay set at topological snapshots in time. Due to errors in wireless link sensing and the potential for significant neighbor adjacency fluctuation, present distributed relay set election algorithms can cause significant reelection churn for a unicast or multicast routing protocol since the algorithm is attempting to optimize the relay set for each topological instance. This paper illustrates an investigation of improvements in temporal robustness by minimizing reelection churn caused by these algorithms. In this paper several existing relay set election algorithms are compared. This includes presentation of performance results in time when undergoing increasing congestion and dynamics due to mobility. Simple techniques designed to improve the temporal stability of the relay set population undergoing significant dynamics are presented and tested. Initial results from modeling demonstrating that temporal robustness improvement to these algorithms is achievable and that more work is needed to understand the tradeoffs, such as the additional network overhead required to achieve stability and the effect of different styles of link fluctuation and topological dynamics.