Susan Rea, Dirk Pesch

Multi-Metric Routing Decisions for Ad Hoc Networks using Fuzzy Logic

On demand routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks, such as Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), generate routes for unknown destination paths on an as needs be basis. So as to avoid the continual demand for route discovery in DSR, network nodes record previously determined routes in either path or link caches. A route discovery attempt can possibly result in several paths being uncovered for a single destination. As nodes often have a finite capacity path cache, it may not be possible to store all paths. In order to make intelligent decision with regard to the caching of paths or links it is necessary to attach weightings to links that are indicative of their quality. This paper presents a fuzzy logic based decision algorithm that weighs either a single link or a complete source destination path in order to instruct caching decisions and to optimise route selection.