An Adaptive Gateway Selection Mechanism for MANET-IoT Applications in 5G Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are sets of autonomous mobile devices that have capacities of self-configuring, self-setting parameters for data transmission in-network. Due to flexible and convenient connectivity, MANETs have been proposed for many applications such as medicine, military, transportation, and disaster recovery. In recent years, to leverage the flexible communication capabilities of MANETs and the unlimited power of the IoT, MANETs have been integrated into IoT networks to form MANET-IoT networks that aim to provide novel solutions with unprecedented capabilities and abilities to serve humanity. However, communication between mobile ad hoc nodes and fixed network nodes of IoT faces some challenges, especially performance issues. In this article, we propose a gateway selection mechanism for MANET-IoT networks. By accounting for the distance, queue length (QL), and responsiveness of gateways, the proposed mechanism provides load-balancing both in-network and between gateways. Simulation results have demonstrated that the proposed approach improves system efficiency in terms of load-balancing, delay, and packet delivery ratio (PDR) compared with existing schemes.