Ad-Hoc & Sensor Networks

IV year II sem

ROUTING PROTOCOLS FOR AD HOC

WIRELESS NETWORKS
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
1. Mobility :
• The network topology in an ad hoc wireless network is highly dynamic due to
the movement of nodes, hence an on-going session suffers frequent path
breaks.

• Disruption occurs either due to the movement of the intermediate nodes in the
path or due to the movement of end nodes.

• Routing protocols for ad hoc wireless networks must be able to perform

efficient and effective mobility management.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS

2. Bandwidth Constraint :

• In a wireless network, the radio band is limited, and hence the data rates it can
offer are much less than what a wired network can offer.

• The routing protocols use the bandwidth optimally by keeping the overhead as
low as possible.

• The limited bandwidth availability also imposes a constraint on routing

protocols in maintaining the topological information.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS

3. Error-Prone Shared Broadcast Radio Channel :

• The wireless links have time-varying characteristics in terms of link capacity and
link-error probability.
• This requires that the ad hoc wireless network routing protocol interacts with the
MAC layer to find alternate routes through better-quality links.
• Also, transmissions in ad hoc wireless networks result in collisions of data and
control packets. This is attributed to the hidden terminal problem.
• Therefore, it is required that ad hoc wireless network routing protocols find paths
with less congestion.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS

4. Hidden and Exposed Terminal Problems :

• The hidden terminal problem refers to the collision of packets at a receiving

node due to the simultaneous transmission of those nodes that are not within
the direct transmission range of the sender, but are within the transmission
range of the receiver.

• The exposed terminal problem refers to the inability of a node which is

blocked due to transmission by a nearby transmitting node to transmit to
another node.
Hidden terminal problem.
Exposed terminal problem.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS

5. Resource Constraints:

• Two major constraints for the nodes in an ad hoc wireless network are battery life
and processing power.

• Devices require portability, and hence they also have size and weight constraints
along with the restrictions on the power source.

• Increasing the battery power and processing ability makes the nodes bulky and less
portable.

• Thus ad hoc wireless network routing protocols must optimally manage these
resources.
 Characteristics of an Ideal Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Wireless
Networks
1. It must be fully distributed. Distributed routing is more fault tolerant.
2. than centralized routing. It must be adaptive to frequent topology changes caused
by the mobility of nodes.
3. Route computation and maintenance must involve a minimum number of nodes.
Each node in the network must have quick access to routes, that is, minimum
connection setup time is desired.
4. It must be loop-free and free from stale routes.
5. The number of packet collisions must be kept to a minimum by limiting the
number of broadcasts made by each node.
 Characteristics of an Ideal Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc
Wireless Networks

7. It must converge to optimal routes once the network topology becomes

stable. The convergence must be quick.

8. It must optimally use scarce resources such as bandwidth, computing power,

memory, and battery power.

9. It should be able to provide a certain level of quality of service (QoS) as

demanded by the applications, and should also offer support for time-sensitive
traffic.
 CLASSIFICATIONS OF ROUTING PROTOCOLS

• The routing protocols for ad hoc wireless networks can be broadly

classified into four categories based on

• Routing information update mechanism

• Use of temporal information for routing

• Routing topology

• Utilization of specific resources

 Based on the Routing Information Update Mechanism

1. Proactive or table-driven routing protocols

2. Reactive or on-demand routing protocols

3. Hybrid routing protocols

Proactive or Table-driven routing
protocols
• These protocols maintain the global topology information in the form of
tables at every node.

• These tables are updated frequently in order to maintain consistent and

accurate network state information.

1. Destination sequenced distance-vector routing protocol (DSDV)

2. Wireless routing protocol (WRP)

3. Source-tree adaptive routing protocol (STAR)

4. Cluster-head gateway switch routing protocol (CGSR)

 Destination sequenced distance-vector routing
protocol (DSDV)
• routes to all destinations are readily available at every node at all times.

• The tables are exchanged between neighbors at regular intervals to keep an up-to-
date view of the network topology.

• The table updates are of two types: incremental updates and full dumps.

• An incremental update takes a single network data packet unit (NDPU), while a full
dump may take multiple NDPUs.

• Incremental updates are used when a node does not observe significant changes in
the local topology.
 DSDV (contd..)
• A full dump is done either when the local topology changes significantly or
when an incremental update requires more than a single NDPU.

• Table updates are initiated by a destination with a new sequence number which
is always greater than the previous one.

• Upon receiving an updated table, a node either updates its tables based on the
received information or holds it for some time to select the best metric (which
may be the lowest number of hops) received from multiple versions of the
same update table from different neighboring nodes.
 DSDV (contd..)
• Based on the sequence number of the table update, it may forward or reject the table.

• Consider the example as shown in Figure 1(a). Here node 1 is the source node and
node 15 is the destination.

• As all the nodes maintain global topology information, the route is already available
as shown in Figure 1(b).

• Here the routing table of node 1 indicates that the shortest route to the destination
node (node 15) is available through node 5 and the distance to it is 4 hops, as
depicted in Figure 1(b).
DSDV (contd..)

Figure 1. Route establishment in

DSDV.
 DSDV (contd..)
• The end node of the broken link initiates a table update message with the broken
link's weight assigned to infinity (∞) and with a sequence number greater than the
stored sequence number for that destination.

• Each node, upon receiving an update with weight ∞, quickly disseminates it to its
neighbors in order to propagate the broken-link information to the whole network.

• Thus a single link break leads to the propagation of table update information to the
whole network.

• A node always assigns an odd sequence number to the link break update to
differentiate it from the even sequence number generated by the destination.
 DSDV (contd..)
• Consider the case when node 11 moves from its current position, as shown in
Figure 2.

• When a neighbor node perceives the link break, it sets all the paths passing
through the broken link with distance as ∞.

• For example, when node 10 knows about the link break, it sets the path to
node 11 as ∞ and broadcasts its routing table to its neighbors.

• Those neighbors detecting significant changes in their routing tables

rebroadcast it to their neighbors.
 DSDV (contd..)
• In this way, the broken link information propagates throughout the network.

• Node 1 also sets the distance to node 11 as ∞.

• When node 14 receives a table update message from node 11, it informs the
neighbors about the shortest distance to node 11.

• This information is also propagated throughout the network.

• All nodes receiving the new update message with the higher sequence number set
the new distance to node 11 in their corresponding tables.

• The updated table at node 1 is shown in Figure 2, where the current distance from
node 1 to node 11 has increased from three to four hops.
DSDV (contd..)

Figure 2. Route maintenance in DSDV.

 DSDV (contd..)
Advantages and Disadvantages :

• Less delay is involved in the route setup process.

• The mechanism of incremental updates with sequence number tags makes the existing
wired network protocols adaptable to ad hoc wireless networks.

• The updates due to broken links lead to a heavy control overhead during high mobility.

• Even a small network with high mobility or a large network with low mobility can
completely choke the available bandwidth.

• Hence, this protocol suffers from excessive control overhead that is proportional to the
number of nodes in the network and therefore is not scalable in ad hoc wireless networks.
 DSDV (contd..)
Advantages and Disadvantages :

• Another disadvantage of DSDV is that in order to obtain information about a

particular destination node, a node has to wait for a table update message
initiated by the same destination node.

• This delay could result in stale routing information at nodes.

Reactive or On-Demand routing
protocols
• Unlike the table-driven routing protocols, on-demand routing protocols
execute the path-finding process and exchange routing information only
when a path is required by a node to communicate with a destination.
 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol
• DSR is designed to restrict the bandwidth consumed by control packets in ad
hoc wireless networks by eliminating the periodic table-update messages
required in the table-driven approach.

• The major difference between this and the other on-demand routing protocols
is that it is beacon-less and hence does not require periodic hellopacket
(beacon) transmissions, which are used by a node to inform its neighbors of its
presence.
 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)
• The basic approach of this protocol during the route construction phase is to
establish a route by flooding RouteRequest packets in the network.

• The destination node, on receiving a RouteRequest packet, responds by

sending a RouteReply packet back to the source, which carries the route
traversed by the RouteRequest packet received.

• When a source node that does not have a route to the destination. When it has
data packets to be sent to that destination, it initiates a RouteRequest packet.

• This RouteRequest is flooded throughout the network.

 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)
• Each node, upon receiving a RouteRequest packet, rebroadcasts the packet to
its neighbors if it has not forwarded already or if the node is not the destination
node, provided the packet's time to live (TTL) counter has not exceeded.

• Each RouteRequest carries a sequence number generated by the source node

and the path it has traversed.

• A node, upon receiving a RouteRequestpacket, checks the sequence number on

the packet before forwarding it. The packet is forwarded only if it is not a
duplicate RouteRequest.
 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)
• The sequence number on the packet is used to prevent loop formations and to
avoid multiple transmissions of the same RouteRequest by an intermediate
node that receives it through multiple paths.

• Thus, all nodes except the destination forward a RouteRequestpacket during

the route construction phase.

• A destination node, after receiving the first RouteRequestpacket, replies to the

source node through the reverse path the RouteRequest packet had traversed.
 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)
• In Figure 1 (a), source node 1 initiates a RouteRequest packet to obtain a path
for destination node 15.

• This protocol uses a route cache that stores all possible information extracted
from the source route contained in a data packet.

• Nodes can also learn about the neighboring routes traversed by data packets if
operated in the promiscuous mode (the mode of operation in which a node can
receive the packets that are neither broadcast nor addressed to itself).
Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)

Figure 1 (a) Route establishment in DSR.

 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)
• This route cache is also used during the route construction phase.

• This cache information is used by the intermediate nodes to reply to the source
when they receive a RouteRequest packet and if they have a route to the
corresponding destination.

• The RouteRequest is propagated till it reaches the destination which initiates

the RouteReply.

• A source node may receive multiple replies from intermediate nodes and it
selects the latest and best route, and uses that for sending data packets.
 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)
• Each data packet carries the complete path to its destination.

• When an intermediate node in the path moves away, causing a wireless link to break,
for example, the link between nodes 12 and 15 in Figure 1 (b), a RouteError message
is generated from the node adjacent to the broken link to inform the source node.

• The source node reinitiates the route establishment procedure. The cached entries at
the intermediate nodes and the source node are removed when aRouteError packet is
received.

• If a link breaks due to the movement of edge nodes (nodes 1 and 15), the source node
again initiates the route discovery process.
Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)

Figure 1 (b) Route maintenance in DSR.

 Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (contd..)
Advantages and Disadvantages :

• Eliminates the need to periodically flood the network with table update
messages which are required in a table driven approach.

• The disadvantage of this protocol is that the route maintenance mechanism

does not locally repair a broken link.

• Stale route cache information could also result in inconsistencies during the
route reconstruction phase.
Hybrid routing protocols
 Core Extraction Distributed Ad Hoc Routing
Protocol (CEDAR)
• It is based on extracting core nodes (also called as dominator nodes) in the
network, which together approximate the minimum dominating set.

• A dominating set (DS) of a graph is defined as a set of nodes in the graph such
that every node in the graph is either present in the DS or is a neighbor of some
node present in the DS.

• There exists at least one core node within three hops. The DS of the least
cardinality in a graph is called the minimum dominating set.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• Nodes that choose a core node as their dominating node are called core member
nodes of the core node concerned.

• The path between two core nodes is termed a virtual link. CEDAR employs a
distributed algorithm to select core nodes.

• The selection of core nodes represents the core extraction phase.

• CEDAR uses the core broadcast mechanism to transmit any packet throughout the
network in the unicast mode, involving as minimum number of nodes as possible.

• These nodes that take part in the core broadcast process are called core nodes.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• When a core node to which many nodes are attached moves away from them,
each node has to reselect a new core node.

• Each core node maintains its neighborhood local topology information.

• CEDAR employs an efficient link state propagation mechanism in which

information regarding the presence of high bandwidth and stable links is
propagated to several more nodes, compared to the propagation of information
regarding low bandwidth and unstable links, which is suppressed and kept
local.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• To propagate link information, slow-moving increase-waves and fast-moving
decrease-waves are used.

• An increase-wave carrying update information is originated when the

bandwidth on the link concerned increases above a certain threshold.

• The fast-moving decrease-waves are propagated in order to quickly notify the

nearby nodes (core nodes which are at most separated by three hops) about the
reduction in available bandwidth
 CEDAR (contd..)
• Increase and decrease-waves are initiated only when changes in link capacity cross
certain thresholds.

• Fast-moving decrease-waves are prevented from moving across the entire network,
thereby suppressing low bandwidth unstable information to the local nodes only.

• Route establishment in CEDAR is carried out in two phases.

• The first phase finds a core path from the source to the destination. The core path is
defined as a path from the dominator of the source node (source core) to the
dominator of the destination node (destination core).
 CEDAR (contd..)
• In the second phase, a QoS feasible path is found over the core path. A node
initiates a RouteRequest if the destination is not in the local topology table of
its core node; otherwise, the path is immediately established.

• For establishing a route, the source core initiates a core broadcast in which the
RouteRequest is sent to all neighboring core nodes as unicast data.

• Each of these recipient core nodes in turn forwards the RouteRequest to its
neighboring core nodes if the destination is not its core member.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• A core node which has the destination node as its core member replies to the
source core. Once the core path is established, a path with the required QoS
support is then chosen.

• To find a path that can provide the required QoS, the source core first finds a
path to the domain of the farthest possible core node in the core path, which
can provide the bandwidth required.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• Among the available paths to this domain, the source core chooses the shortest-
widest path (shortest path with highest bandwidth).

• Assume MidCore is the farthest possible core node found by the source core. In the
next iteration, MidCore becomes the new source core and finds another MidCore
node that satisfies the QoS support requirements.

• This iterative process repeats until a path to the destination with the required
bandwidth is found.

• If no feasible path is available, the source node is informed about the non-availability
of a QoS path.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• Among the available paths to this domain, the source core chooses the shortest-
widest path (shortest path with highest bandwidth).

• Assume MidCore is the farthest possible core node found by the source core. In the
next iteration, MidCore becomes the new source core and finds another MidCore
node that satisfies the QoS support requirements.

• This iterative process repeats until a path to the destination with the required
bandwidth is found.

• If no feasible path is available, the source node is informed about the non-availability
of a QoS path.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• Consider Figure 1 (a) where the source is node 1 and the destination is node 15. The core
nodes in the network are nodes 3, 5, 11, 12, and 13.
• In this figure, node 5 is the dominator of nodes 1 and 6. Similarly, node 12 is the dominator
of node 15.
• When node 1 initiates a RouteRequest to be flooded throughout the network, it intimates its
core node the <source id, destination id> pair information.
• If the core node 5 does not have any information about the dominator of node 15, which is
the destination node, it initiates a core broadcast.
• Due to this, all nearby core nodes receive the request in the unicast transmission mode. This
unicast transmission is done on the virtual links.
CEDAR (contd..)

Figure 1.(a) Route establishment in CEDAR.

 CEDAR (contd..)
• For core node 5, the virtual link with core node 3 comprises of the links 5-2 and 2-3,
while the virtual link between core nodes 5 and 13 is represented by path 5-4-8-13.
• When a core node receives the core broadcast message, it checks whether the
destination is its core member.
• A core node having the destination as one of its core members replies to the source
core node. In our case, core node 12 replies to core node 5.
• The path between core nodes 12 and 5 constitutes a core path. Once a core path is
established, the feasibility of the path in terms of the availability of the required
bandwidth is checked. If the required bandwidth is available on the path, the
connection is established; otherwise, the core path is rejected.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• CEDAR attempts to repair a broken route locally when a path break occurs. When a
link u-v on the path from source to the destination fails, node u sends back a
notification to the source and starts recomputation of a route from itself to the
destination node.

• Until the route recomputation gets completed, node u drops every subsequent packet
it receives.

• Once the source node receives the notification sent by node u, it immediately stops
transmitting packets belonging to the corresponding flow, and starts computing a new
route to the destination.
CEDAR (contd..)
Figure 1 (b). Route maintenance in CEDAR.
 CEDAR (contd..)
• Consider the network topology shown in Figure 1 (b). When the link between
nodes 12 and 15 breaks, node 12 tries to reconnect to the destination using an
alternate path that satisfies the bandwidth requirement.

• It also notifies the source node about the link break. The source node tries to
reconnect to the destination by reinitiating the route establishment process.

• In case node 12 does not have any other feasible path, then the alternate path 1-
5-4-8-13-15 found by the source node is used for the further routing of packets.
 CEDAR (contd..)
Advantages and Disadvantages :

• It performs both routing and QoS path computation very efficiently with the
help of core nodes.

• The increase- and decrease-waves help in appropriate propagation of the stable

high-bandwidth link information and the unstable low-bandwidth link
information, respectively.

• Core broadcasts provide a reliable mechanism for establishing paths with QoS
support.
 CEDAR (contd..)
Advantages and Disadvantages :

• A disadvantage of this protocol is that since route computation is carried out at

the core nodes only, the movement of the core nodes adversely affects the
performance of the protocol.

• Also, the core node update information could cause a significant amount of
control overhead.