Multiple Path Infrastructure-less Networks A Cooperative Approach

For future generation networks, the development of new and novel architectures is needed if integration, expansion, and usability demands are to be met. This paper proposes a new network architecture that can be used for developing and maintaining multi-path routes through a cooperative node approach. The cooperative nodes assist in the network development and are designed to act as forwarders of messages using idle or underutilized channels. The proposed architecture shows that, even without optimization, significant improvement can be seen in latency, goodput, and channel utilization. The architecture consists of five stages named Discovery, Decision, Utilization, Data Collection, and Dynamic Adaptation. By design, the architecture is developed to be modular with individual stages capable of functioning unaided by the other stages and developed to be easily implemented in any of the network layers. Due to space constraints, optimization and challenges such as the handling of unrelated packet formats are omitted and proposed in different works.