Communication-aware mobile hosts in ad-hoc wireless network

A mobile, multi-hop wireless computer network, also termed an ad-hoc network, can be envisioned as a collection of routers, equipped with wireless transmitter/receiver, which are free to move about arbitrarily. The basic assumption in an ad-hoc network is that some nodes willing to communicate may be outside the wireless transmission range of each other but may be able to communicate if other nodes in the network are willing to forward packets from them. However, the successful operation of an ad-hoc network will be hampered if an intermediate node, participating in a communication between two nodes, moves out of range suddenly or switches itself off in between message transfer. The objective of this paper is to introduce a parameter, affinity that characterizes the strength of relationship between two nodes and to propose a distributed routing scheme between two nodes in order to find a set of paths between them which are more stable and less congested in a specific context. Thus, the communication in an ad-hoc wireless network can be effective by making the nodes in the system communication-aware in the sense that each node should know its affinity with its neighbors and should be aware of the impact of its movement on the communication structure of the underlying network.