Impact of Node Density on Cross Layer Design for Reliable Route Discovery

in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

B.Ramachandran S.Shanmugavel
Dept. of Electronics & Communication Engg. Dept. of Electronics & Communication Engg.
S.R.M. University Anna University
Chennai – 603 203 Chennai – 600 025
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract : AODV and DSR send control packets only when route
The mobile nature of nodes and dynamic discovery or route maintenance is done. When a route
topology of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) lead is created or repaired, the control packets, particularly
to route failures and requiring the transmission of RREQ packets flooded by source is network wide
control packets. It is important to reduce the number of broadcast. Moreover, the number of control packets
control packets to save resources and to improve the increased rapidly with network size and topology
overall performance of the network. Ad-hoc On- changes.
demand Distance Vector (AODV) is appealing as an The primary goal of an ad-hoc network
efficient on demand routing protocol because of low routing protocol is correct and efficient route
routing overhead and high performance. However, establishment between a pair of nodes so that messages
AODV is not robust against topology variations as it may be delivered in a timely manner. Route
uses weak links due to long hops introduced by shortest construction should be done with a minimum of
path metric. In this paper we propose a mobility overhead and bandwidth consumption. The on-demand
adaptive cross layer design to enhance the performance routing protocols create route only when desired by the
of AODV routing protocol by establishing stable source node. When a node requires a route to a
routes. The adaptive decision making according to the destination, it initiates a route discovery process within
speed of mobile nodes on Route Request (RREQ) the network. This process is completed once a route is
packet forwarding results in stable routes. We also test found or all possible route permutations have been
the impact of node density in the network on our examined. Once a route has been established, it is
algorithm, to tell, when to invoke the our cross layer maintained by a route maintenance procedure or until
design in mobile ad-hoc networks. To demonstrate the the route is no longer desired. The Ad-hoc On-Demand
efficiency of our protocol and its impact on network Distance Vector routing protocol builds on the
connectivity, we present simulations using network Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV)
simulator, GloMoSim. algorithm. It is an improvement on DSDV because it
Keywords: Mobile Ad-hoc Networks, AODV, Routing typically minimizes the routing load by creating routes
Overhead, Stable Route, and Cross Layer Design. on a demand basis.
AODV [2] is a pure on-demand route
I. Introduction acquisition system, since node that are not on a
Recent growing interest on potential selected path do not maintain routing information or
commercial usage of MANETs has led to the serious participate in routing table exchanges. When a source
research in this energy and bandwidth constrained node desires to send a message to some destination and
network. It is essential to reduce control packet does not already have a valid route to that destination,
overhead as they consume resources. Routing in it initiates a “route discovery” process to locate the
MANETs is non trivial. Since mobile nodes have destination. It broadcasts a route request packet to its
limited transmission capacity, they mostly neighbours, which then forward to their neighbours and
intercommunicate by multi-hop relay. Multi-hop so on, until either the destination or an intermediate
routing is challenged by limited wireless bandwidth, node with a “fresh enough” route to the destination is
low device power, dynamically changing network located. During the process of forwarding the RREQ,
topology, and high vulnerability to failure and many the intermediate nodes record in their route tables the
more. To meet those challengeous, many routing address of the neighbor from which the first copy of
protocols have been proposed for MANET [1]. They the broadcast packet is received thereby establishing a
are categorized as proactive and reactive protocols. reverse path. If additional copies of the same RREQ
Proactive protocols such as DSDV periodically send are later received, these packets are discarded. Once
routing control packets to neighbors for updating the RREQ reaches the destination or an intermediate
routing tables. Reactive routing protocols such as node with a fresh enough route, the destination /
intermediate node responds by a unicast route reply signal strength changing rate is used to predict the link
(RREP) packet back to the neighbor from which it first available time between two nodes to find out a
received the RREQ. (The route maintenance process satisfying routing path in [6], which reports
and other details of AODV are not considered here as improvement in route connection time. In [7], route
they are out of scope of this paper). fragility coefficient (RFC) is used as routing metric, to
AODV prefers longer hops to form shortest cause AODV to find a stable route. Mobility aware
path, which in turn makes route with weaker links. The agents are introduced in ad-hoc networks and Hello
presence of node mobility may induce route failures packets of AODV protocol is modified in [8] to
(link failures) frequently. Many studies have shown enhance mobility awareness of node to force it to avoid
that the on demand approach is relatively quite highly mobile neighbor nodes to be part of routes and
efficient under a wide range of scenarios. But when ultimately to reduce the re-route discovery. On
seen in isolation, route discovery component is the receiving the Hello Packet with GPS co-ordinates of
major bottleneck in on demand protocols. Since route the originator, mobility agent compares them with
discovery is done via network wide flooding, it incurs previous ones and hence has awareness about the
significant routing overhead and eats greater network mobility of the originator with references to itself.
resources. Actually, the longer distance between In [9], an AODV based protocol which uses a
intermediate nodes on the route rises route maintenance backbone network to reduce control overhead is
cost, reduces the packet transmission rate (due to proposed. The destination location is given by GPS and
increased packet loss), and induces frequent route transmitted to source by the backbone network to limit
failures [3]. the route search zone. But formation of an additional
In our previous work, we proposed a cross backbone network and GPS enabled service are extra
layer design extension to AODV in order to form stable burden for infrastructure-less ad-hoc network
routes. It reduces route failures and hence, keeps implementation. In order to cope with problems such as
routing overheads as low as possible, at the cost of the poor performance of wireless links and mobile
lengthy routes with more hops. In this paper, we go terminals including high error rate, power saving
further in enhancing AODV performance, by using requirements and quality of service, a protocol stack
mobility based adaptive cross layer design to optimize that considers cross layer interaction is required [10].
the trade off between route stability and number of Multi-hop routing, random movement of the
hops. Our objective is to form reliable routes in order nodes and other features unique to ad-hoc networks
to reduce number of routing control packets, and thus results in lots of control signal overhead for route
conserving network resources. discovery and maintenance. This is highly
The proposed mobility adaptive cross layer unacceptable in bandwidth-constrained ad-hoc
design couples the route discovery process with networks. Usually the mobile devices have limited
physical layer related received signal strength computing resources and severe energy constraints.
information and speed of mobile nodes to built stable Currently ad hoc routing protocols are researched to
and optimum routes. As these constraints on received work mainly on the network layer. It guarantees the
signal strength and node speed will certainly have an independency of the network layer. However each
impact on network connectivity, we also study the layer needs to do redundant processing and
suitability of our algorithm under various node density unnecessary packet exchange to get information that is
levels. The remainder of this paper is organized as easily available to other layers. This increases control
follows. In section II, we present the related work and signals resulting in wastage of resources such as
emphasize the need for cross layer design. Section III bandwidth and energy. Due to these characteristics,
describes the proposed mobility adaptive cross layer there is lot of research work happening in the
algorithm. The simulation model, results and analysis performance optimization of ad-hoc networks.
are presented in section IV. Finally we conclude our However, most of the research works are based on
discussion in section V. optimization at individual layer. But optimizing a
particular layer might improve the performance of that
II. Related Work layer locally but might produce non-intuitive side
As an optimization for the current basic effects that will degrade the overall system
AODV, in [4], a novel stable adaptive enhancement for performance. Hence optimization across the layers is
AODV routing protocol is proposed, which considers required through interaction among layers by sharing
joint route hop count, node stability and route traffic interlayer interaction metrics [11]. By using cross layer
load as a route selection metric. A QoS routing interaction, different layers can share locally available
protocol based on AODV to provide higher packet information. This is useful to design and standardize an
delivery ratio and lower routing overheads using a adaptive architecture that can exploit the inter-
local repair mechanism is proposed in [5]. The received dependencies among link, medium access, networking
and application protocols. The architecture where each The fixed threshold value used is independent
layer of the protocol stack responds to the local of speed of mobile nodes and it may not be justified to
variations as well as to the information from other low speed nodes. Hence, in this new adaptive cross
layers is a major challenge [12]. layer design, we propose adaptive decision making of
Cross layer interaction schemes that can RREQ forwarding in accordance with speed of mobile
support adaptability and optimization of the routing nodes which is discussed in the following section.
protocols can discover and maintain the routes based
on current link status, traffic congestion, signal strength III. Mobility Adaptive Cross Layer Design
etc. Usually routing layer is not concerned with signal Routing protocol may let route / link failure
strength related information handling. Lower layer happen which is detected at MAC layer by
takes care of signal strength related issues. Signal retransmission limits, but dealing with route failure in
strength can be useful to know the quality of link to this reactive manner results in longer delay,
select for best effort packet forwarding and to achieve unnecessary packets loss and significant overhead
power conservation [13]. Only the link with signal when an alternate new route is discovered. This
strength above the threshold value can forward the problem becomes more visible especially when mobile
packet. Routing algorithm can exploit signal nodes move at high speed where route failure is more
characteristics related information for such benefits. probable due to dynamic topology changes and
In the previous work on Reliable AODV [14], negative impact of control packet overhead on network
we used signal strength information as interlayer resources utilization is of more significance. We
interaction parameter. The strength (received power) of emphasize that routing should not only be aware of, but
RREQ broadcast packet is passed to the routing layer also be adaptive to node mobility. Hence we propose
by the physical layer. In the routing layer the signal mobility adaptive cross layer design.
strength is compared with a pre-defined threshold In this cross layer design a node receiving
value. If the signal strength is greater than the signal, measures its strength and passes it from
threshold, the routing layer continues the route physical layer to routing layer. We also assumed that
discovery process. Otherwise the Reliable AODV information about speed of the node is available to it.
drops the RREQ packet. This leads to formation of Hence the signal strength, when receiving RREQ
routes with strong links where adjacent nodes are well packet which is a MAC broadcast, is passed to routing
within the transmission range of each other. So, even layer along with the speed information of the node. The
when the nodes are moving, the probability of route AODV routing protocol’s route discovery mechanism
failure due to link breakages would be less with is modified to use the above two parameters in making
Reliable AODV, compared to the existing Basic a decision on forwarding / discarding the RREQ
AODV. The threshold value is set suitably with packet.
reference to the nodes’ transmission power which The received signal strength is measured and
dictates the transmission range. The essence of used to calculate the distance between the transmitting
Reliable AODV is illustrated in Fig.1 where the node and receiving nodes. The two ray propagation model is
A sends a RREQ which is received by its neighbors B considered, where the loss coefficient value used is 2
and C. As the received signal strength at node B as the maximum transmission range (dmax) of nodes is
exceeds the threshold, it forwards the RREQ but the 350 meters which corresponds to 10dBm transmission
node C drops the RREQ because it is close to the power. Hence the received signal strength can be
transmission range boundary of node A and hence has expressed as
a weak link to node A. Pr = Pt (λ/ 4πd)2 (1)
Where, Pt - Transmission Power
λ - Wavelength in meters
and d - Distance between transmitting and
receiving nodes
Also the unity gain omni directional
transmitting and receiving antennas are considered.
When the RREQ packet is presented with
received signal strength information to the AODV
implementation of the node, it calculates its distance
from transmitting node using,
d = Sqrt (Pt / Pr) * (λ / 4π) (2)
Next, the receiving node calculates its
distance to the transmission range boundary of the
Fig. 1 Reliable AODV
transmitting node using the known maximum standard with RTS / CTS extension and provide link
transmission range (dmax) as, layer feedback to routing layer. The CBR traffic of 4
db=dmax– d (3) packets per sec, with 512 bytes packet size is used.
The minimum time needed for a node to go There are two randomly chosen source-destination
out of the transmission range boundary of the pairs and each source generates 4200 packets.
transmitting node depends its distance from the Simulations are run for 1200 seconds and each data
boundary and the speed as given below. point represents an average of at least four runs with
tb = db / Speed (4) different seed values.
If the source specifies a minimum route life- Identical mobility and traffic scenarios are
time (tl), in its RREQ packet, any intermediate node used across the three protocol variants. The fixed signal
receiving that packet can calculate its safe distance strength threshold used in AODV-Fixed variant is -
from transmission range boundary using its speed 78dBm whereas AODV-Adaptive used received signal
information as strength and speed of mobile nodes passed from
ds = tl * Speed (5) physical layer through cross layer interaction. The
It is now possible to the node to make a minimum route life-time requirement is set as 4
decision on forwarding the RREQ. That is, the decision seconds. We used the following five parameters to
rule inserted in AODV route discovery mechanism is, evaluate the performance of the protocol variants: 1)
{If (db ≥ ds), Number of routes selected (implies route failures), 2)
then forward RREQ Number of RREQ packets transmitted (counted hop-
else drop RREQ }. (6) by-hop basis), 3) Packet delivery ratio, 4) Number of
Hence the route discovery mechanism of Hops and 5) Average end-to-end delay.
AODV routing protocol is made adaptive to the node
speed, which leads to the formation of more stable
(reliable) routes. The parameter tl, the minimum route
life-time, is application specific.
This adaptive algorithm will certainly reduce
the hop count and hence the average end-to-end delay
of data packets than those incurred with fixed signal
strength threshold based RREQ processing. To show
the efficiency of our new adaptive algorithm,
simulation results are presented in the next section.

IV. Simulation Model and Result Analysis

The simulation for evaluating the problem is
implemented within the GloMoSim library [15].
GloMoSim provides a scalable simulation environment
for wireless network systems. It is designed using the
parallel discrete event simulation capability provided Fig 2. Route Failure Frequency
by PARSEC, a C based simulation language developed
by parallel computing laboratory at University
California at Los Angels, for sequential and parallel
execution of discrete event simulation models. The
simulation area is 1000 x 1000 square meters size,
where nodes are placed uniformly. The transmission
power and receiver threshold level of nodes are 10dBm
and -81dBm respectively. The random way point
mobility model is used. In this model, each node
chooses a random destination and move towards that
destination with a random speed chosen between the
minimum and maximum values specified. The node
then waits there for the specified pause time and
continues it movement as described above. The
bandwidth of shared wireless channel is assumed to be
2 MHz. The physical layer employs two ray
propagation model. The nodes use the distributed co-
ordination function of IEEE 802.11 WLAN [16] Fig 3. Routing Overhead
 In the experiment to study the effect of
mobility, the maximum speed of nodes is varied
between 0-25 m/sec, where 49 nodes are used in the
simulation. Fig 2 shows the number of routes used by
three protocol variants. The Fixed and Adaptive
AODVs result in reduced number of routes selected,
i.e. reduced number of route failures that reflect the
formation of reliable (more stable) routes. Hence the
number RREQ sent by nodes also got reduced as
shown Fig 3. We could also infer that usage of fixed
threshold value leads to reduced connectivity,
particularly at very low speed ranges, which make
AODV-fixed to suffer with increased RREQ broadcast
during route search process. The improvement in
packet delivery ratio is reflected in Fig 4.
Both AODV-Fixed and AODV-Adaptive
variants outperform AODV-Basic, because of stable
Fig 4. Reliable Packet Delivery route formation. But this improvement is at the cost of
increased number of hops, which is shown in fig 5.
This figure also highlights the need of mobility
adaptive route discovery which optimizes routes with
speed information and helps in reducing the average
end-to-end delay of data packets significantly than
those incurred with fixed threshold usage. Fig 6 shows
the delay performance of three protocol variants.
Further, in order to explore the impact of node
density on the proposed new cross layer algorithm, we
conducted another experiment, in which the node
density is varied between 16 and 64 nodes in 1000 x
1000 sqm area. The maximum speed of mobile nodes
is set as 25 m/sec. The imposed signal strength
threshold and minimum route life-time constraints
reduce network connectivity, which is shown in Fig 7.
The number of routes used by AODV-Fixed variant is
relatively low at very low node density, which does not
imply formation of stable routes but reflects scarcity of
Fig 5. Average Path Length network connectivity. The repeated search for
connectivity increases the RREQ broadcasts in AODV-
Fixed variant which is presented Fig 8. But, the
performance of AODV-Adaptive excels in this regard.
Hence, the control packet overhead is under control
even in lightly densed network with our adaptive
algorithm.
The packet delivery ratio suffers when these
constraints are enforced in lightly densed networks.
The improvement is visible only when network
density increases beyond a particular level as shown in
Fig 9. So, it is clear that cross layer design using signal
strength threshold is useful and improves network
performance in highly densed networks where
redundantly available links ensure required network
connectivity. Where as the new adaptive algorithm
makes a trade off in this regard between the basic and
fixed AODV variants. Hence when to invoke cross
layer algorithm is also an important design issue.
Fig 6. Delay Performance
 V. Conclusion
We observe that the cross layer
AODV with fixed threshold reduces the number of
route failures and routing overheads, at the cost of
increased hop counts and average end-to-end delay.
Certainly the proposed mobility adaptive algorithm
for route discovery optimizes the above trade off. The
AODV-Adaptive variant reduces number of hops and
delay to a greater extent and brings them closer to
those of AODV-Basic variant. It is important to note
that both cross layer AODV variants improve the
packet delivery ratio, but at the cost of slightly
increased end-to-end delay. However, the reduced
route failures and routing overheads obtained are very
attractive for mobile ad-hoc networks which are highly
resources constrained. Finally, it is worth to note that
impact on network connectivity due to signal strength
Fig 7. Node density vs Route Failures threshold enforcement is serious in lightly densed
networks and hence, the proposed cross layer design is
well suited for highly densed networks.

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