Routing with congestion awareness and adaptivity in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobility, channel error, and congestion are the main causes for packet loss in mobile ad hoc networks. Reducing packet loss typically involves congestion control operating on top of a mobility and failure adaptive routing protocol at the network layer. In current designs, routing is not congestion-adaptive. Routing may let congestion happen, which is detected by congestion control, but dealing with congestion in this reactive manner results in longer delay and unnecessary packet loss and requires significant overhead if a new route is needed. This problem becomes especially more visible in large-scale transmission of heavy traffic such as multimedia data, where congestion is more probable and the negative impact of packet loss on the service quality is more significant. We argue that routing should not only be aware of, but also be adaptive to, network congestion. We propose a routing protocol with such properties.