Combined Mobile Ad-Hoc and Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Routing

The main assumption of many routing protocols for wireless mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) is that end-to-end paths exist in the network. In practice, situations exist where networks get partitioned and traditional ad-hoc routing fails to interconnect different partitions. Delay/disruption-tolerant networking (DTN) has been designed to cope with such partitioned networks. However, DTN routing algorithms mainly address sparse networks and hence often use packet replication which may overload the network. This work presents a routing approach that combines MANET and DTN routing to provide efficient routing in diverse networks. In particular, it uses DTN mechanisms such as packet buffering and opportunistic forwarding on top of traditional ad-hoc end-to-end routing. The combined routing approach can be used in well-connected networks as well as in intermittently connected networks that are prone to disruptions. Evaluation results show that our combined approach can compete with existing MANET and DTN routing approaches across networks with diverse connectivity characteristics.