SAFAR: An adaptive bandwidth-efficient routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoe network suffers from the same cost constraints as most wireless networks. In particular bandwidth constraints of wireless links are severe. We present a scalable adaptive fitness-based routing protocol, SAFAR, for mobile ad hoc networks in which we try to optimize the usage of this bandwidth at every stage. The protocol is hybrid, i.e. it makes use of both proactive and reactive procedures for routing in an attempt to reduce route acquisition latency. Using a fitness function, a node decides how many other nodes can be proactively maintained by it. Each node tries to know the best(most fit) nodes in its neighborhood. Hence, high bandwidth nodes are well known. Most of the traffic is routed through these nodes and hence performance is optimized. We present simulation results to substantiate the protocols performance. We also extend this protocol to show how it can be used for power aware routing.