Providing service continuity in ad hoc networks

Abstract

Most of the investigations on ad hoc protocols do not consider the fact that future wireless networks are capable to adapt their behaviour to the channel situation. These adapting functionalities haven't been developed to be used in multihop ad hoc networks. Therefore the performance of ad hoc routing using IEEE 802.11a turned out to be unexpected inefficient. This paper presents a new concept to improve ad hoc routing protocols exploiting IEEE 802.11a link adaptation capabilities. The IEEE 802.11a link adaptation information is used to predict the link stability and link lifetime. Prediction is very useful to ensure continuously data delivery, since routes can be adapted to the network situations.