Functional Enhancements of Proactive Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is central to their proper functioning. Network dynamics make the routing a real challenging task. Although a host of studies has been reported in the literature evaluating the performance of proposed routing algorithms, a deeper insight reveals some residual malfunctioning: wall effects, looping and inconsistency. In this paper, we first unleash the cover on some interesting residual functional problems in proactive routing algorithms. We investigate through simulations the extent of these functional deficiencies. We then propose some simple and effective solutions. The effectiveness of our proposals are showed through various simulation scenarios. In particular, we show that even when control traffic is given a higher priority over normal data traffic, the malfunctioning persists and is only and totally removed when the proposed solutions are integrated.