A local/global strategy based on signal strength for message routing in wireless mobile Ad-hoc networks

Route switching is an important issue to connection-oriented communication that needs to maintain a route for a certain period of time. This chapter presents a new approach to ease the route switching problems in a network with a high rate of unit migration. By monitoring the signal strength of messages, a unit in a route that receives an incoming message can detect possible route fluctuations locally. As the average signal strength declines into a dangerous level, the unit that receives the message will send an advancewarning message to the route source unit. If the source unit can find more stable routes locally, it will adapt a substitute route and will complete the process of adaptation before the breakdown of the original route. If the route source unit cannot adapt a new route locally, the source unit will be forced to search for a new route by considering the entire network. The evaluation conducted quantifies the benefits of the new approach.