A collaborative routing for wireless multi-hop networks with directional antennas

In this paper we propose a collaborative routing protocol (CORP) for wireless multi-hop network with directional antennas that utilizes the wireless broadcast advantage (WBA) properties. In CORP, the neighboring nodes collaborate with each other to directionally forward the packets when an intermediate relay node is unable to perform its task due to channel/node failure. The process of collaboration is supported by the RSS value obtained from the MAC layer to form the set of collaborating nodes. The temporary link formed by the collaborating node will maintain the ongoing transmission until the old route is recovered or a fresh route is generated. We performed simulation studies using QualNet to prove that our protocol is suitable for wireless multi-hop networks that are prone to frequent node/link failure.